Doing Good Spotlight: From Football Dreams to Running Marathons with the Visually Impaired

Imagine you have a promising college football career, and are eligible for the professional draft, and then you find yourself with a knee injury that ends it all. What would you do? For Jacob Karroum, Atlas Sales Manager, you meet a new challenge: serving as a visual guide for the Boston Marathon. 

For Jacob, like many who commit to being a volunteer, he was raised with the notion of giving back with his mother and grandparents, setting a strong foundation of helping the less fortunate and those simply striving to be better. “For several years, my mom has been President of Scarborough Toastmasters and was an English teacher in Toronto. She helps those for whom English is a second language—usually refugees. And as long as I can remember I’ve always wanted to help people.” 

Indeed, Jacob has been helping coach all his life beginning with helping as an assistant for a floor hockey team of 6-year-olds when he was only in the 8th grade. Now, he sits on the Board of his local Rugby Club as the Chair for Fundraising and Sponsorship—putting his sales skills to use to help give back.  

It was his use of his Volunteer Time Off (VTO) that really got the attention of his Atlas colleagues when he posted a photo from the Boston Marathon with his running mate Ary Tsotras, who was left with severe visual impairment after a car accident. For the last four years, Jacob has led Ary through the marathon thanks to the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired.  

Jacob explains that after his knee injury and college, he took a job in Tech Sales and had started running to help rehabilitate his knee after surgery. He had heard about Ary, a fellow co-worker who was blind but ran marathons and previously participated in IRONMAN events.  Admittedly, while he was curious, it wasn’t until Ary was transferred onto his team that the pair began to talk one day.  

“He said he needed a new guide, and did I think I could be ready in four months?” Jacob still smiles at that memory. “It was the Boston Marathon, I said I’d be ready.”  

As it turned out, Jacob and Ary had grown up in the same neighborhood, went to the same high school, and never met until they worked in the same office. Now they get the opportunity to travel and run together, meeting other amazing athletes and volunteers along the way. People like Paralympian Chaz Davis, fellow guide-runner and Greek-American Olympian and Filmmaker, Alexi Pappas, and the Saperstone’s who house Jacob and Ary stay each year in Boston. 

On volunteering, Jacob says the key is to find something that doesn’t feel like a job. He admits there are days when it’s cold or raining and he doesn’t want to get up and go running, but he does because it is something bigger than himself. “It’s very inspiring to be around people who don’t see impossible.”