Coming home to New Jersey brought back painful memories for ABC’s newest “Secret Millionaire,” Scott Jacobs.
The famous commercial artist — whose paintings sell for up to $145,000 each — grew up in suburban Westfield, but fled to southern California in 1996.
“I didn’t have the greatest childhood back in Jersey,” he tells The Post. “I had two alcoholic parents. My dad used to beat my mom. He beat us as kids.”
It has also been nine years since Jacobs has spoken to his younger brother, a high school drop out and alcoholic, who still lives near their childhood home.
“So going back,” he says, “brought up a whole bunch of emotions that I haven’t dealt with in a long time.”
But it also gave the father of two an opportunity to share some of his estimated $40 million net worth with less fortunate individuals and organizations in Newark.
The show finds successful business people and, for a week, puts them undercover as working stiffs in poor areas — a twist on the Prince and the Pauper idea that gives the financially well-to-do an up-close look at how the other half lives.
To get on the show, the “millionaire” must pledge to give away an agreed-upon sum at the end of his or her week in disguise.
For the show — which returns for a summer run Sunday night — Jacobs, 53, and his daughter Alexa, 19, were allowed to spend only $71.03 (the equivalent of a food stamp allowance for a two-person home) on themselves for the week.
They slept in a vacant, rundown apartment in a gang-infested part of Irvington, just outside Newark.
“When we got there, the neighbor next door says ‘I can watch out for you during the day, but at night, nobody comes out,’ ” Jacobs recalls. “It is too dangerous around here.”
On the very first day of filming, a man approached his daughter in a local store and threatened to kill her, Jacobs says. (The incident does not appear on the show.)
Father and daughter joined a midnight mission to find and aid homeless veterans near Newark’s Penn Station, organized by The GI Go Fund, and spent time with Glass Roots, a charity that works with at-risk youth.
After agreeing to appear on the show, “ABC told me what I had to give and I put that money into a fund in escrow,” Jacobs says.
“I gave [approximately] $180,000, which is like a painting and a half for me,” he says. “I have seven motorcycles and four homes and eight cars. I can afford to give more. And I will give more. I will continue to be philanthropic the more successful I am.”
But the trip back to North Jersey was more than a chance to share some wealth. It was a return to the place he’d run from so long ago.
Jacobs began to build his art empire shortly after graduating from Westfield High School in 1976.
At 19, he purchased a struggling art gallery near his home with money earned from odd jobs.
By 21, he had three.
Eventually, at the prompting of a friend, Jacobs combined his artistic talent with a passion for motorcycles and became the first officially licensed Harley Davidson artist.
“I think one of the reasons I became the most successful person in my family financially is that my dad always told me growing up that I was a failure,” he says. “So I was out to basically prove my parents wrong.
“I worked for every single thing I have,” he says. “Nothing was ever given to me. Every dollar I made was a separate brush stroke on a piece of canvas.
“Now to be able to go back to New Jersey and be immersed in what we were immersed in is a real reality check. Anybody can have a reversal of fortune at any time.”