San Francisco, CA
Bay Area military veteran chosen for free Super Bowl tickets by USAA
When the Super Bowl kicks off on Sunday, one local fan will be there as an honored guest.
A long-time Army veteran will be getting the VIP treatment, and it won’t cost him a dime. It’s payback for a life spent serving his country and his community.
When Eugene “Rich” Ritchie retired, he began volunteering at the USO Lounge at SFO, welcoming service members traveling to and from the city. But the other day, the USO staff told him that he had been nominated to be in a contest.
That’s when he got the phone call.
“And it’s, ‘Congratulations, we selected you.’ And I was like, what?! Really?” Rich said. “And they said, who’s your favorite player? I said, ‘McCaffrey, right now, is my most favorite current player. Oh yeah, McCaffrey, he’s awesome.’ And they’re like, ‘ho, ho, ho’… I’m like, ‘OK, something’s up.’”
Sponsored by the USAA insurance company, Rich and his wife Alexia, who live in Richmond, will get tickets to the game, a hotel on Union Square, and pretty much an entire weekend of fun for doing something that started clear back when he joined the ROTC program at Cal Berkeley.
Rich was the only one to select “infantry” as his desired duty when everyone else wanted military intelligence.
“So, I was an anomaly at Berkeley,” he said, with a laugh.
In 1981, he was a 20-year-old lieutenant and was eventually sent to Korea to command a security unit at the DMZ, at a time when tensions were running high. After that came 20 years of training and service in Honduras and various bases stateside. Then came 9/11 and the US war on terror, and Rich was sent to Iraq to help the locals become a capable fighting force.
“I lived with the Iraqis,” he said. “My job was to live with the Iraqis. I had a team and we basically trained them in Western tactics.”
Rich said he was impressed with the courage shown by the Iraqi forces he trained. He served for a total of 24 years, from 1981 to 2005, retiring with the rank of Major in the US Army. Later, after getting out of the military, he took a position as a special education teacher at Albany Middle School, a job his wife Alexia said required a bit of courage, as well.
“He didn’t shed a tear in Iraq, but he cried his first couple of days as a teacher at the middle school with a bunch of 6th graders!” she said, laughing. “That was his breaking point. But he survived and he’s a veteran of both occupations, you bet.”
Alexia is also a 49er fan, but she’s an even bigger fan of her husband, saying he put off his retirement to volunteer to serve in Iraq.
“He could have retired, but he actually pulled his retirement paperwork so that he could step up for an eight-month deployment in Iraq,” she said. “And to watch him being again in the spotlight — so well deserved — is what makes my experience here that much sweeter.”
And the sweetness began on Wednesday, when Rich and Alexia got their tickets and a chance to meet their favorite player. Niners running back Christian McCaffrey has his own foundation to support veterans, so this Super Bowl promotion was a natural fit.
“I’m really proud of the work we’ve done, and I’m super excited about the work to come in the future,” McCaffrey said. “We get to play a kid’s game for a living. We play in front of millions of people. And a lot of that is because of the people who have sacrificed for us.”
Rich was surprised that he was selected, but he has spent his entire life in service to others. And now, he’s serving again, this time as a symbol for all the men and women who are part of something much more important than just a “kid’s game.”
A California sea lion pup found last week on a San Francisco street corner is malnourished but “active and quite feisty,” The Marine Mammal Center said Monday.
The sea lion, believed to be about 10 months old, had apparently wandered into city’s Outer Sunset neighborhood and was discovered early Thursday morning, authorities said.
The pup was spotted near 48th and Irving Streets, one block from Ocean Beach and Sunset Dunes park. A trained responder from the Marine Mammal Center was joined by San Francisco park rangers and police officers to safely corral the pup, now named ‘Irving’, into a carrier crate.
Dubbed ‘Irving’ by his rescuers, Irving weighed in at 40 pounds and is considered malnourished, the Marine Mammal Center said.
“The sea lion is active and quite feisty which is a positive initial sign in terms of general behavior,” the center said in a news release on Monday.
During an exam by veterinarians, a series of blood samples were also taken to determine whether there’s any underlying ailment.
Irving is being tube fed a fish smoothie blend two times per day to boost hydration and weight; offers of whole herring will also begin shortly.
The quick actions by police, recreation and parks staff and Ocean Avenue Animal Hospital gave the young sea lion a second chance at life, said Lauren Campbell, animal husbandry manager at The Marine Mammal Center.
“As a roughly 10-month-old pup in his first year of learning how to forage on his own, this animal has a long road to recovery due to his severe malnutrition,” Campbell said. “We are hopeful that in the coming weeks with continued specialized care that this pup starts to make positive strides toward recovery and release.”
Irving will be held in the Center’s Intensive Quarantine Unit until clearing medical protocols, before likely being transferred this week to a traditional rehabilitation pool pen. A long-term prognosis and potential release timeline are not currently known.
After Sunday’s 3-0 loss to the Washington Nationals, the San Francisco Giants headed back to the West Coast. They’re going back to the Bay Area, too.
The Giants have a date with the Los Angeles Dodgers for a three-game series at Oracle Park starting Tuesday night.
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So, San Francisco probably wanted to get out of Washington, D.C., with a win. That didn’t happen at Nationals Park on Sunday afternoon.
Nationals reliever Andrew Alvarez, the third pitcher used by the team on Sunday, picked up the victory with 4 1/3 innings of work. Giants starter Robbie Ray absorbed the loss, falling to 2-3 this season.
Ray worked six innings, giving up seven hits, three runs (all earned), walking one, and striking out seven Nationals. If the Giants’ offense had found a way to tack on some runs, then Ray’s outing wouldn’t have looked so bad.
The Giants’ bats, though, had eight hits. The big number for Giants manager Tony Vitello to look at in the box score after this one was, well, pretty big. San Francisco left 10 runners on base on Sunday, going 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. This indicates that San Francisco had plenty of opportunities to score some runs.
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They just didn’t get the job done.
Let’s go to the bottom of the fifth with the Giants and Nationals in a scoreless tie. With nobody out, the Nationals’ Keibert Ruiz connected for his third double this season. Nasim Nuñez scored to put Washington up 1-0.
With one out, Curtis Mead sent a Ray pitch over the left-field wall, a two-run blast that gave the Nationals a 3-0 lead.
San Francisco had a scoring threat in the top of the eighth inning. With runners at first and second base and nobody out, Casey Schmitt grounded into a double play. Matt Chapman, who was on second base, went to third. But the Giants were unable to bring him home.
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Rafael Devers and Drew Gilbert went 2-for-4 at the plate for the Giants, producing half of the Giants’ hits.
The Giants fall to 9-13 this season, sitting in fourth place in the National League West Division. The Nationals’ record goes to 10-12, good enough for third place in the National League East Division.
All eyes now turn toward Oracle on Tuesday night. It’ll be a chance for two longtime rivals to renew their rivalry.
Baseball fans know that the Giants-Dodgers matchups usually are must-see TV.
That’s probably going to be the case once again as Giants fans watch their team battle the Dodgers. Those lucky to have tickets to the three-game series at Oracle Park will show up in Giants colors, hoping to see Los Angeles head back to Southern California with either a series loss or a Giants’ sweep.
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Buckle up, Giants fans. It’s about to get rowdy at Oracle Park.
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The 4,140-sq-km bay is the largest estuary on the west coast of the US. Before 2018, this species of whales wasn’t known to stop seasonally or consistently in the bay, bypassing it on their migration route down to Baja California and back up the Arctic, said Josephine Slaathaug, who led a recent study on gray whale mortality in the bay.
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