In September 2021, Kevin Tuckman, a 48-year-old sales manager, was doing a demo for a potential client in Foster City when he started having difficulty talking. “I would want to say something, and some words came out, but others I couldn’t say,” Tuckman said. After he dropped his pen five times within a one-minute period, Tuckman’s colleague, Melissa Jackson, asked him if he was OK. “I remember looking at Melissa, taking a deep breath and saying, ‘Give me a minute.'” He continued to discuss the digital technology he was trying to sell, going over numbers and figures, but his math was completely wrong. Eventually, Jackson said: “You aren’t OK, we need to take you to the hospital.”
After they left the meeting, Jackson called Tuckman’s fiancée Karla Wargo who said: “Take him to UCSF.” For Wargo, who grew up in San Francisco, UCSF is always her first choice for loved ones in need…
