Meet a leading voice in Minnesota cure for paralysis

After achieving success in Minnesota and Ohio, Jake Beckstrom’s organization sets their eyes on Pennsylvania

By Gabriel Castilho / The Hubbard School

Meet Jake Beckstrom, one of Minnesota's leading voices for the cure for paralysis. Born and raised in Watertown, Minnesota, he works at the Unite 2 Fight Paralysis nonprofit organization as its Cure Advocacy program manager—planning lobbying strategies to ensure the Spinal Cord Injury community have a say in the research efforts that affect them.

This Monday Beckstrom held a meeting with the Unite 2 Fight Paralysis advocacy group in Pennsylvania to discuss strategies to lobby its state legislators. He said due to the government change in the state after the Covid-19 pandemic, its department of health decided to run their partnership differently than how Beckstrom’s organization designed.

“There’s a tension between how the department of health wants the program to be run and how the advocates and the people living with the disabilities want,” Beckstrom said. “We’ve had many meetings with the DOH and we’ve met legislators … and they’ve come to a compromise, which is beneficial, but also still not designed how we originally designed it.”

Beckstrom said advocates would often lose steam after repeatedly not succeeding and “drift away.”

“Even though we are at a bypass in Pennsylvania, a lot of people showed up to the meeting, a lot of people gave their opinions and asked questions,” Beckstrom said. “It shows that they are still invested.”

Beckstrom’s organization aims at uniting and empowering the international spinal cord injury community to cure paralysis through advocacy, education and support for research. But curing paralysis is far from Jake’s only interest.

Beckstrom graduated from the Vermont Law School with a certificate in water resources law and a master’s degree in environmental law and policy. He was admitted to the Minnesota State Bar in 2017 and since then has been a writer for the monthly Bench & Bar Magazine.

“I’m really interested in water law,” Beckstrom said. “I do a lot of articles on waters of the United States, water regulation rights in the state. But I also write about the Migratory Bird Act, anything that comes across the desk.”

Jake sees having those two jobs positively. He said having a background as an attorney helps his mind deal with the policy issues and speaking with the legislators.

“I don’t wear a lawyer hat to U2FP but it definitely does help—that legal background mindset,” he said.

A Family of Fishermen

One of the most common activities for the Beckstrom family is fishing.

“One of the mainstays of the Beckstrom household is that we’re fishermen,” Jake said.

Kurt Beckstrom, Jake’s father, is a retired fishing journalist. To him, Jake had always been inquisitive and outside doing something. 

“When he was four years old he caught his very first Muske, which is a very prestigious fish to catch,” Kurt said. “It was almost 40 inches long, it was longer than he was tall.”

When Jake Beckstrom was 16-years-old, he spent his entire summer in California living with his cousin. When he came back from California, he had a diving accident in a backyard pool and sustained a C4-6 spinal cord injury, leaving him quadruplegic. 

“I’m really grateful that I got to spend that time in California because I learned how to surf out there in the ocean,” Jake said. 

Even though his hand movement is limited, he can still go fishing with his father and his brother.

“I have a splint that connects to my wrist and the rod locks into the splint, so I can reel,” Beckstrom said. “I’m happy that I am still able to do that.”

A Loyal and Helpful Friend

Following Jake Beckstrom wherever he goes is Finley, his 3-year-old service dog. Beckstrom has had Finley, his third assistance dog, for eight months. 

“He’s a great dog,” Beckstrom said. “He’s quite energetic and he’s got a lot of tenacity. He loves to go-go-go.”

Finley is more than just a cute and famous part of the Prospect Park neighborhood. He helps Jake by performing several sorts of “tasks.”

“If I drop something, like the remote control or a pen, he can pick it up off the ground and bring it back up, and put it on my lap,” Beckstrom said. “He can turn light switches on and off, he can hit the automatic door buttons to open accessible doors. With a non-accessible door, if there’s a rope on the handle, he can grab the rope to open and close the door.” 

Jake met Finley and his other two service dogs through the Helping Paws nonprofit, an organization that breeds, trains, and places assistance dogs with people who have physical disabilities, veterans and first responders with PTSD. 

“I am a lawyer, and I tell people I wouldn’t be a lawyer today without Helping Paws and my first service dog Miles,” he said. “When I went to undergrad at SMSU I had Miles by my side and he made life so much easier. He made my education go by so flawlessly.”

Jake’s Impact On His Community

According to Beckstrom, due to the Cure Advocacy Network, the Unite 2 Fight Paralysis program has had success in states like Minnesota, where it is running exactly as the organization designed.

“There have been over 200 people living with spinal cord injury who have received some type of functional recovery due to the research that’s coming out of Minnesota,” Beckstrom said.

The CAN also had some success in Ohio, where research efforts are more technology-based, Beckstrom said. 

“There are lots of researchers out there that have no connection to spinal cord injury whatsoever, they just kind of chose it as an academic pathway, but they really don’t have a personal touchpoint,” he said. “What they think might be a good idea is not necessarily a good idea for someone living with the injury, whereas we can provide that feedback.”

Jake hopes he can soon translate those successes to states like Pennsylvania.