Okay, so, I was digging around on the internet, just wasting time, really, and I stumbled upon this name, Rick Kaepernick. I was like, “Who’s this dude?” Turns out, he’s the adoptive dad of Colin Kaepernick, that football player who caused all that controversy a while back.
So, I got curious and started poking around to learn more about this Rick guy.
First thing I did was just a simple search. I typed “Rick Kaepernick” into the search bar and started scrolling through the results. I saw a bunch of articles about Colin, but not much about Rick himself. There’s a ton about how Rick adopted Colin, and that he and his wife, Teresa, are a white couple from Wisconsin.
I learned that Rick and Teresa adopted Colin when he was just a tiny baby, like five weeks old. Apparently, they had trouble adopting before, and then along came Colin. I read that they moved from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, later on, but the articles didn’t say where to.
Then I tried to find some stuff about Rick specifically, like what he did for a living or something. I found some short bio things, but nothing too detailed. It’s like, everyone’s more interested in Colin, which is understandable, but still, I wanted to know about Rick!
I went through a few different websites, and they all said the same basic stuff. Rick and Teresa adopted Colin, they’re white, they’re from Wisconsin. I found out that Colin’s biological mom, Heidi Russo, was only 19 when she had him and she put him up for adoption.
I even tried to see if there were any interviews with Rick or anything like that. No luck. It’s like he’s a ghost or something. All the focus is on Colin and his activism. It’s like no one’s tried to dig in to tell Rick’s story, what it was like to adopt Colin, and what it’s like to be the father of a person that everyone has strong opinions about.
So, after all that searching, I didn’t really find out much about Rick Kaepernick, the man. I guess he’s just a regular guy who happened to adopt a kid who grew up to be a famous, and controversial, football player. But I still think there’s a story there, waiting to be told.
What I learned:
- Rick and Teresa Kaepernick adopted Colin Kaepernick when he was 5 weeks old.
- They are a white couple originally from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
- Colin’s biological mother is Heidi Russo.
- There’s not a lot of information out there about Rick Kaepernick himself.
It was a bit of a dead end, but it was still interesting to try and piece together what little information there is about Rick Kaepernick. Maybe someday someone will write a book about him. Until then, he’ll just be “Colin Kaepernick’s dad” to most people.
