Resident of Aptos

Jim Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1937 to H.J. Jackson and Florence Shannon. They moved to Fordham Road in San Mateo in 1939 with his younger brother Mike. Growing up, Jim was the leader of the Fordham gang, co-captain of the football team, and head of his fraternity.

He attended St. Matthew's Grammar School and Serra High School, where he excelled in football, baseball, and boxing. Father John Zoph, the head of the library and English Department at Serra was his mentor and taught him to drive. He still holds the record for the two longest runs from scrimmage in the same game and is amember of the Serra High Athletics Hall of Fame. Jim also won the boxing championship in 1955, having used his younger brother for punching bag practice along the way. He received a full scholarship to UC Berkeley, played football for two years, and graduated in 1959. After, he moved to the Midwest and worked for an outdoor advertising company but quickly determined that wasn’t the life for him. He returned to San Mateo, attended U.C.

Hastings College of Law and was admitted into the Order of the Coif, passed the bar in 1963, and began serving as Assistant D.A. for Alameda County. That same year he married his first wife, Helen Jones, they went on to have two children, Jamie and Bart.

After his time in Oakland, Jim moved to Santa Cruz County and began working with Gary Britton as the county public defenders. In the early 70s, Jim, along with his best friend Harold Cartwright, defended three back-to-back serial killers (Herbert Mullin, John Frazier and Edmund Kemper III), an era where Santa Cruz was branded, “Murder Capital of the World” by District Attorney and great friend Peter Chang. Jim took no pleasure in defending killers but always believed in the sanctity and fairness of the law. A great friend of his from the Santa Cruz DA’s office said he “was the most ethical attorney and person that he ever had the honor of knowing.”

Despite the legal side Jim may have been defending, he always maintained close personal relationships with the opposing lawyers, or judges; and was an active part of the vibrant legal community of Santa Cruz County for many decades; he even took in Harry Brauer after his wife, Georgia, moved to Arizona. Jim wound up his professional legal career back at the DA’s office, this time in Santa Cruz, where he focused on white collar crime prosecutions resulting in scores of fraudster convictions and guilty pleas. Jim met his wife Cameron in Santa Cruz through mutual friends Randall and Caryl Kane and they went on to have two children JJ and Mackey.

Personally, he enjoyed traveling the world with his family, looking for the best plays (not musicals) to attend and dim sum to eat. After he retired, he took up acting and appeared in several local plays with both his son JJ and daughter Mackey. Jim always loved living in the Aptos fog and could frequently be found with a good “crap book” in his hand or engaging in conservative political discussions. He was actively involved with many personal interests including the Catholic Church, cooking for family, friends, and the homeless, engaging with his German Shepherd of the time, or hosting a weekly talk show on KPIG radio; as well as picking up the odd pro bono case for those he felt had been a bit left behind by the legal system.

Jim is survived by his wife of over 50 years, Cameron, and his children Jamie and her husband Steve, Bart and his wife Ayako, JJ and his wife Jo-Anne, Mackey and her husband Aaron, as well as grandchildren, Lauren, Joseph, Lachlan, Duncan, Ruby and Dylan. He is also survived by his younger brother Mike.

A funeral mass will be held at Resurrection Catholic Church in Aptos, CA on Tuesday, January 21st at 11am with a reception to follow at the Seacliff Inn.