Eve Kopp thought the phone call was a prank. Russell Wilson? Who was that? He calmly explained that he was one of the new draft picks by the Seahawks on that late summer afternoon in 2012. He wanted to become a part of the fabric of the city and wanted to get involved with a cause immediately and thought Seattle Children’s Hospital would be a great place to start. He loved kids, liked making people smile, laugh.
Russell Wilson visited Seattle-area resident, Sierra Semanko, at Seattle Children's Hospital in early December.
Kopp put him through the vetting process.
“At first we were dubious,” said Kopp, the director of corporate annual giving for the hospital’s foundation. “We thought, ‘Is this guy going to really come every week?’ No way. We’ve never had that experience before.”
They wondered if there were other motives behind the request. The hospital had dealt with the city’s athletes before. Some would say they would come regularly, show up once or twice and then never again. Others would be ushered in for photo ops in common areas with non-serious patients and then out the door they went.
They tried Wilson out on a trial basis. They put him in playrooms with some of the kids to see how he interacted. Most people didn’t even know who he was yet, because he wasn’t the Seahawks’ starting quarterback.
Everyone kept waiting for the Tuesday when he wouldn’t show up.
That never happened. And even more stunning: Wilson kept asking for more. See more kids. Visit more rooms. See the toughest and hardest cases in the hospital.
“I think that to be able to try to find a way to change people’s lives and to be there for them and give them a boost is really important to me,” Wilson said this past week. “They don’t realize how much they’ve affected me. Seattle Children’s has been amazing to me every week. Allowing me to go see different kids and I’ve met so many. I’m not sure how many kids I’ve met, but I’ve met over hundreds and hundreds of kids. Every single time I see a kid smile, it really just opens up my heart and means a lot to me.”
Tuesdays with Russell Wilson: Seahawks QB uplifts spirits of strangers at Seattle Children's Hospital
All a PR stunt right?
real shyt right there
