Singer Jewel pleaded for Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh to seek mental health help prior to his death in a house fire

An upcoming biography of former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has revealed how the singer Jewel tried to save her longtime friend before his November 2020 death.

Jewel, according to an excerpt of the biography published in the Wall Street Journal last week, approached Hsieh with her concerns for his mental health on multiple occasions before his death aged 46 in a house fire two years ago.

While his death was ruled an accident, reports from the time suggest Hsieh had been suffering from ill mental health and had turned to drugs including nitrous oxide, which delivers a temporary high.

During a visit to Hsieh’s home in Utah in August 2020, Jewel and her employees allegedly found the Zappos CEO surrounded by canisters of nitrous oxide, which reports suggest he was abusing before his death, the autobiography says.

“Hundreds of candles” were also found at Hsieh’s home, which was described as being “dirty” and littered with excrement from his terrier-mix, Blizzy, by those familiar with the folk singer behind the 1995 hit “Who Will Save Your Soul“.

Post-it notes also told visitors not to clean the rubbish, and Jewel eventually found Hsieh sitting in his underwear in his backyard during her August 2020 visit to his Utah home. It was thought to have come in the days after his resignation as CEO of Zappos, an online clothing retailer.

Hsieh told her he had invented “the algorithm for world peace” and presented Jewel with a box containing scribbled numbers, and also claimed to have “hacked” the need to sleep and said: “I’m going to start a new country”, according to the autobiography.

On her way out, she told a security guard and staffers: “If he kills himself and everyone else in there from a huge fire, you can’t say you weren’t warned”. The excerpt also said Jewel questioned what visitors were doing at the property, many of whom appeared unconcerned about the Zappos CEO.

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As Forbes reported in December 2020, Jewel voiced her fears after visiting Hsieh and told him in a letter: “I am going to be blunt...I need to tell you that I don’t think you are well and in your right mind.”

“I think you are taking too many drugs that cause you to disassociate,” Jewel’s letter alleged, adding: “The people you are surrounding yourself with are either ignorant or willing to be complicit in you killing yourself.” 

The remarks were included in a series of revelations about Hsieh in the upcoming biography by Kirsten Grind and Katherine Sayre, which is titled: Happy at Any Cost, The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. It is released in the US on 15 March.

Jewel and the late entrepreneur reportedly met when she was working to develop a mental health programme for Zappos employees, and afterwards became a friend and business partner.

Last week, a former friend, assistant, and business associate of Hsieh took his family to court for $9m (£6.8m) in allegedly unpaid work under contracts with the former Zappos CEO.

If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). The Helpline is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.