The Life and Near Death of Drkoop.com

"As I came to the end of my surgeon general years, I felt that I had gained the public's trust and that I should do something with it," Koop wrote in his 1991 autobiography. "First, I wanted to make sure that I did not use that trust only for private gain. Like many Americans, I was disgusted with the way retired politicians - even presidents - cashed in on their celebrity status."

Koop's celebrity was built on doing just the opposite, on standing up for the public good. After leaving his post in Washington, he continued to work on problems patients had with managed health care organizations obsessed with controlling costs. To help patients learn more about medicine and take more control of their health, in 1992 he established the C. Everett Koop Institute, a nonprofit at Dartmouth College.

So Koop was receptive when former advertising executive J. Keith Green pitched him a proposal in 1994 to market a series of health information videotapes that would take Koop's message to the masses. Green had lined up Time Life to license its venerable name and provide financial muscle. But he needed Koop as the company's public face. As an incentive, Green reportedly promised Koop a salary of $750,000. Koop signed on as chairman of the company, Patient Education Media, but his chief responsibilities were to appear in the Time Life Medical videos. "These videos are designed to help newly diagnosed patients get their feet on the ground and communicate more productively with their physicians," Koop said at the time.

The venture's fate would foreshadow Drkoop's later troubles: It had an unproven business model - selling $19.95 videotapes in pharmacies - spent extravagantly and ultimately failed to meet sales projections. "We didn't spend too much, we just didn't raise enough," Green told the Wall Street Journal in 1997 before the company filed for bankruptcy with liabilities of $39 million. Green would later resurface at Drkoop.com.

By most accounts, the Time Life debacle left Koop bewildered and embarrassed. But the experience didn't inoculate him against the charms of smooth-talking Internet entrepreneurs who could spin a vision of using Koop's name to promote his public health mission while making a buck for themselves.

One of those entrepreneurs was John Zaccaro, who would play a key role in the formation of Drkoop.com. Zaccaro has not been shy when it comes to selling himself to others. "Actor, stunt man, adventurer, million-dollar-a-year salesman and master consultant John F. Zaccaro reveals the secret forces that bring riches and help you change your life and fortune," reads a publisher's blurb for a 1986 motivational book Zaccaro wrote titled Climb Your Own Mountain: The Ultimate Success Guide.

The reality of his career is somewhat more prosaic. Zaccaro, now 65, made his fortune in carpet padding and pool covers. Even when selling pool covers, Zaccaro infused the job with a sense of grandeur. "I did indeed personally help install the solar pool cover on the White House pool while President Gerald Ford was in office," he writes in an e-mail. "He's a super salesman, a promoter, a media-type guy, but a man of integrity," says T.J. Dermot Dunphy, chairman of Sealed Air (SEE), which sold the pool blanket Zaccaro marketed. "It's absolutely natural he would end up promoting an e-commerce company."

In the early 1980s, Zaccaro joined a startup founded by the ex-wife of health-and-beauty mogul Vidal Sassoon. The relationship ended badly, and Zaccaro sued the company for nearly $20 million, claiming Beverly Sassoon and her partners reneged on an agreement to make him president and COO "at an annual salary of $120,000, plus luxury automobile and 20 percent equity," according to Los Angeles County court records. Zaccaro later dropped the case. He then jumped back into the pool industry. By the end of the decade he switched gears again, joining Physician Computer Network, a New Jersey company that sold software to doctors.

While at PCN, Zaccaro hired a then-thirtysomething former computer salesman named Donald Hackett. Like Zaccaro, Hackett was ambitious, entrepreneurial and a natural salesman. But if Zaccaro could strike associates as arrogant, Hackett displayed a charisma and a sincerity that inspired loyalty among his colleagues. (Even after suing him for fraud, a former consultant fondly recalled his friendship with Hackett.) Hackett left PCN in 1996 and began a short-lived stint as COO and later CEO of TradeWave, an Austin company that made Internet security software. But he had bigger plans.