Bay Area military veteran chosen for free Super Bowl tickets by USAA

By John Ramos

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.”