Michael Schaupp, also known by his musician name Jackson Danny, was born in Carmel County on May 4th, 1977.
He was riding his 1996 Honda motorcycle northbound on Highway 17 around 1:25 pm, Dec 10th, 2013, when a woman driving a black 1994 Ford Explorer SUV made an illegal turn onto the highway and drove into his path. Schaupp hit the SUV and was thrown 20 feet across the roadway. He was taken to the hospital where he died of his injuries. The woman left the scene of the accident and abandoned the vehicle. Three months later, she turned herself in and was charged with a felony count of hit-and-run causing injury or death. The following song was played at her trial. It had been performed by Mike a few months before his death. The name of the song and the woman – Joline.
In the song, Mike changed the lyrics a bit. It is interesting to see the changes he made. Here are the lyrics as best I can reconstruct them – some changes of interest in bold from the original song by Dolly Parton. The “To never love again” change is in a stanza that is a mixture of two different stanzas.
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
I’m beggin you don’t take my man
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
Please don’t you take him can
Please don’t take him cuz you can<Instrumental>
Your beauty is beyond compare
Flamin’ locks of auburn hair
Skin of ivory … eyes emerald green
Smile is like a breath of spring
Voice is like a summer rain
I cannot compete … JoleneJolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
Beggin’ you, don’t take my man
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
Please don’t take him cuz you can
Please just take him cuz you can<Instrumental>
And you could have your choice of men
To never love again
You don’t know what it means to me, Jolene
I had to have this talk with you now
My happiness depends on you
Whatever you decide, JoleneJolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
I’m beggin’ you don’t take my man
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
Please don’t take him cuz you can
Please just take him cuz you can
Mike’s fatal accident was part of a story written by Jennifer Wadsworth for the July 8-15, 2015 edition of Metro, a local newspaper in San Jose, CA. The story was about Lupin Lodge, where Joline worked and/or lived at the time. For some reason, the original link for the story goes nowhere and there is a shorter version of the story. Here is an excerpt of the original story:
Michael Schaupp left Santa Cruz around midday Dec. 10, 2013, for a 2pm class at Ex’pression College in Emeryville. The 36-year-old father and design student had driven the same northward Highway 17 route countless times on his 1996 Honda VLX motorcycle. Drivers who shared the winding mountain road with him that day said he looked at ease, like an experienced rider. And he was.
But about a half-hour into his commute, a 1994 Ford Explorer shot out onto Highway 17 from Idylwild Drive in a southbound arc that cut off Schaupp and sent him hurtling to the shoulder, according to detailed reports by California Highway Patrol officers. A trail of blood plotted his trajectory. The Explorer’s 47-year-old driver, Joline Fay Cohen, scrambled out of the SUV just as another car pulled up to the scene.
“Oh my God, I just killed that guy,” she told the witness, per the CHP. “Did you see him hit my car? What should I do?” Without waiting for an answer, she hopped back in the driver’s seat and drove away. A second witness pulled onto the shoulder and put a blanket on Schaupp, protecting him from the winter chill until help arrived.
A short distance north, Cohen, in a long black coat and dry dirty- blonde hair, left her car at Bear Creek Road and began walking along the shoulder, the collision report continues. Campbell resident Brandon Rohzen told police that he picked her up in his minivan, thinking she’d just got into a fender- bender and could use a lift. From the passenger seat, he said he remembers her calling Lupin’s office landline. “I hit somebody,” she shouted hysterically. “I think they might be dead.” Horrified, Rohzen slammed on the brakes and told her to get out of his car.
Schaupp died two days later at Stanford Hospital. Yet three full months passed before Cohen surrendered herself to authorities on hit-and-run charges that landed her in a Central Valley women’s prison.
Lupin residents claim Lori Kay harbored a fugitive during that time, leaving them no choice, they said, but to tip off CHP investigators to Cohen’s whereabouts. As a live-in assistant for several years to Lori Kay, Cohen ran errands, oversaw the main office and, according to CHP tipsters, had a reputation for smoking meth and driving erratically. Lupin management tried to distance itself from the damage, announcing online that the club had fired her as office employee before the crash. “She was allowed to stay because there are such thing as tenancy laws,” Lori Kay explained.
But the tragedy raised more questions about Lupin’s hiring practices. In an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit against Cohen, Schaupp’s mother, Denise, and 19-year-old son, Caleb, also name Lupin as a defendant. The Schaupp family attorneys claim that Cohen was acting “within the scope of her employment” while driving the
SUV and that Lupin is vicariously liable because it employed her “with knowledge of her history of reckless driving, erratic behavior and substance use.”
surfing the universe 