SEATTLE — Timothy Pitts and Stacey Swinson had just gotten to know their son.
They gave him up for adoption in 1984, when he was only a year old.
Steven Rintamaki came back into their lives four years ago, just before he joined the Marines. Rintamaki, 21, from Lynnwood volunteered to fight in Iraq. He was killed in action last week.
His biological parents, long split up, became good friends with their son, who had been adopted and raised by the Rintamaki family of Lynnwood.
He would go to his father’s home and play with his younger step-brother and step-sister. And he wrote poems about his rediscovered parents.
“You’re my father. I only have one,” he wrote. “But I got your back, Daddy. I’m proud to be your son.”
To his mother, he wrote, “It’s been a crazy life, but now I feel a little more at peace. It’s OK, Mom, I’ll always be there. Tell your worries to cease.”
Rintamaki and Swinson were in contact several times a week.
“We were very, very close,” Swinson said. “It was like there was never any time lost between us.”
A selfless act
Rintamaki was the gunner on a Humvee on patrol in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle area, according to Pitts. Two men approached the Humvee and blew themselves up. Rintamaki was the most exposed, and died in the blast. The three other Marines on his Humvee survived.
His father believes Rintamaki volunteered to be the gunner.
“He sacrificed his life to save three others. That’s pretty valiant to me,” Pitts said. The Marine told his father that he wouldn’t run if he got into a dangerous situation.
Pitts of Seattle and Swinson of Tacoma each said Rintamaki tended to think of others before himself.
“He was full of passion,” Swinson said. “He was the type of person that was more concerned with everyone else’s feelings and didn’t really display his own.”
He was a jokester, she said, and expressed himself through his poetry.
“I exist in the depth of solitude,” Rintamaki wrote, “pondering my goals, my true goals. Trying to find peace of mind and still preserve my soul.”
“He told me if he died to go to his house and get his poetry,” Pitts said, reading from his son’s journal.
A challenge found
Rintamaki attended Meadowdale High School in Lynnwood and Westside Place, a private school in Seattle, Swinson said. He also played the violin and the drums and did some acting, Pitts said.
But he was looking for something more. At age 17, shortly after contacting his biological mother and father, he said he was joining the Marines.
“He was just really trying to find some direction in his life, and something challenging,” Swinson said.
It made a difference for him, she said. “He grew into a distinguished, confident gentleman full of strength. It was really awesome to be able to watch the growth.”
Last November, he had the choice of getting out of the Marines or going to Iraq, Swinson said. He opted for the latter.
“I was not really thrilled with that idea,” Swinson said. “But it was something he really wanted to do, and so you have to support that decision.”
There was a going-away party at a Red Robin restaurant about a week before Rintamaki’s 21st birthday, on June 17. When he died Sept. 16, he was six months away from coming home.
No support for war
Neither Pitts nor Swinson supports the war in Iraq.
“I don’t like war, I told him,” Pitts said. “I hate to see any kids die, let alone my own.”
With Saddam Hussein captured and no weapons of mass destruction found, “we need to pull our people out now,” Swinson said.
“It’s time for them to come home. We have too many people dying for a cause that’s not ours.”
Rintamaki’s family will receive the Marine’s Purple Heart. Pitts has no interest in it.
“It doesn’t mean nothing when your son don’t come home,” he said. “It’s hard when your son comes home, you can’t even open his casket because it was an explosion.”
A memorial service will be arranged when Rintamaki’s body is brought home, which may not be until early October, Swinson said.
Grief shared
Now, Rintamaki’s loved ones are pulling together the best they can.
“We’re all sort of working together and grieving together,” said Myra Rintamaki, the Marine’s adoptive mother. She declined to say more about her son until another time.
“He was just an honest, good, fun-loving guy,” Pitts said. “It just didn’t turn out the way it should’ve.”
Steven Rintamaki is survived by his adoptive mother Myra Rintamaki, and adoptive sisters Tiarrah Rintamaki and Lindsay Rintamaki; biological parents Pitts and Swinson; half-sisters Nicole Gore and Tim-Esha Pitts, and half-brothers Brandon Gore, Stafone Pitts and Timetrius Pitts.
Bill Sheets is a reporter for the Herald in Everett.
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