Justin Brown tells people the day he jumped out of a car that was traveling 45 mph was the day that saved his life.
He broke his skull open and had emergency surgery.
It was the first day of a years-long transformation that took him from a place of self-loathing to one of self-sacrifice.
From a job that paid him six figures, but where he drank until he blacked out, to running Builders Care, which changes people’s lives by repairing their homes for free.
The charitable arm of the Northeast Florida Builders Association helps people with critical home repairs.
Brown came to Builders Care last summer. One of his self-imposed tasks is to build a list of every person who’s asked for help from the organization, to call them and to set priorities.
Hundreds of names are already written in his notebook and the need appears endless.
Builders Care’s bank account isn’t.
Brown was hired to fundraise. Money’s been tight since 2007 and grants are a slim possibility for now.
Brown’s strategy: Don’t give up. Act like a solid organization.
“Whatever we have, we have to go out and do as much as we can in the community,” he said. “If we do God’s work, the money will come in.”
Belt tightening isn’t a life Brown got stuck with. It’s one he consciously chose. There was a time when he had it all — money, job, status.
In mid-2002 he was named manager of a failing Jacksonville branch owned by Ameriquest Mortgage. A natural salesman, he enjoyed finding talent, bringing in account executives and teaching them the sales process.
Under Brown’s tenure, Jacksonville became one of the top Ameriquest branches in the nation.
“I loved the company,” he said.
His life was filled with sales events in Las Vegas and the Bahamas on the company’s dime. But it was also very stressful.
“Even though I had been very successful, I still always felt my job was on the line,” he said.
His office was writing more than $12 million in mortgages a month, but inside, Brown was miserable.
“I was ‘Money Justin.’ It was all about my ego, wanting more and more,” he said
Brown had always been a party guy and the job gave him license to drink. He’d start early in the day, while he was still in the office.
After work on Feb. 27, 2004, he took the whole office out bowling. Brown paid the manager a $100 tip to keep the lanes open after hours.
He called his girlfriend (who is now his wife) to say he’d be home soon.
Brown was drunk when he was a passenger in a friend’s car that night. The last thing he remembers seeing was a sign to Daytona Beach.
Brown doesn’t know why, but he jumped out of the car. His friend rushed to help him.
“They told me he was holding me in his arms, his chest soaked in my blood, screaming for someone to help me,” Brown said.
When Brown woke up in the hospital, there were tubes in him.
“It was the worst pain I’d ever felt. Like a glass pane was shoved through my head at the eye,” he said.
People standing around him wondered if he’d be brain dead. He wanted to write and tell them he was OK. His parents flew in from Asia.
As the week progressed, Brown found he couldn’t pick up a Coke can. He had recall-delay issues.
There was something else hanging over his head.
“In all of this, all I wanted was to get back to my job,” Brown said. “I was afraid I was going to lose my job.”
After a week, he could walk unassisted. He left the hospital. After a month at home, he felt well enough to go back to work.
His area manager, though, told him he could come back only if he worked as an account executive.
He’d already given Brown’s job to one of his own people from Tampa.
“It was deflating,” Brown said. “My whole recovery had been about getting back to work.”
Brown took medical leave instead.
Over the next decade, Brown would continue in the financial industry. He ran his own mortgage and title companies until the recession.
He helped institutional investor friends build their rehab-to-rent companies.
But Brown never quite returned to the life he had before.
He didn’t drink for eight years. He spent a few years as a stay-at-home dad after his son was born. He wondered what his purpose was.
It started a few weeks after the accident. Brown went back to his doctor and thanked him for saving his life.
His doctor said, “It’s really not up to me. I had a 9-year-old girl come in two months earlier with the exact same injuries, but I lost her.”
It was the beginning of Brown’s search for God. A secular guy since childhood, he began studying Christianity and Eastern faiths.
He became fascinated by the sower’s parable in the Bible. He realized parables and much of the Bible held deeper meanings.
He scoured the New Testament, searching for the devil. He became convinced it was one’s ego.
“It’s our sense of self, the idea that we are individuals, which keeps us from realizing we are connected to everyone else,” Brown said.
Brown volunteered at church, helping Burmese refugees understand mortgages in the U.S.
He continued working with his friends who were institutional investors, helping them with tax protests. But, the task was losing its appeal.
In the first year, he saved the companies $45,000. In the second, $80,000. By the third year, when he saved them $110,000, everyone was making plenty of money.
“They didn’t need it anymore,” Brown said. “I stopped caring. It didn’t mean anything.”
A month before he was hired to do it again, Brown found out about the job at Builders Care. It was a better fit, a way to be of service and give a voice to people who don’t have one.
“When someone’s a homeowner, you just assume that they’re doing OK,” Brown said. “Then you get into their lives and you find out, after they pay their electric bill and their prescription medication, they have $200 for the rest of the month.”
So far, the successes have been modest. Brown has focused on the most critical needs — leaky roofs and wheelchair ramps.
But he said he’s never felt so good after a day’s work.
“Since the jump, I always wondered what my purpose was,” Brown said. “At Builders Care, I just feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
Not as flashy as sales trips to the Bahamas, but ultimately, a better kind of success.