We can all rest easier today knowing that Sports Illustrated was almost certainly not behind the admittedly fake letter that they published about the cop named Ricky Thurman who pulled over the kid who was speeding home to get the swimsuit Issue out of his mailbox before his father could get his hands on it.
It seemed just as likely that the letter was invented by someone at SI as anyone else, because it would have been so easy for SI to figure out that there was no such cop as Ricky Thurman, and the story seemed too corny for anyone else to want to lie about.
But that was before a concerned member of the Parkland High School (Allentown, PA) Class of 2009 wrote to tell me that:
“Ricky Thurman is this dude I made up a couple of years ago who has since pulled all sorts of pranks around [ ] school. Obviously, my friends and I got a big kick out of seeing SI publish the letter. I, like you, am surprised they didn’t do a better check-up on it.”
It turns out that, among other achievements, Thurman ran a “historical class presidency campaign” and once “perturb[ed] a certain Mr. Stephens with extra papers to grade.”
While SI wrote that “someone purporting to be Mr. Thurman satisfactorily answered our researcher’s questions prior to the letter’s inclusion in our magazine,” my informant forwarded what he claims to be the only communication sent to him by SI prior to the letter’s publication, an email, which didn’t ask the purported Ricky Thurman what precinct he worked at, but only asked “whether [he] issued a ticket to the speeding teenager or did you let him off with a warning.” (The original email to SI didn’t mention the result of the traffic stop.)
This story can be verified at a facebook page dedicated to Mr. Thurman, “The one and only Ricky Thurman,” that looks to have been set up some time in 2007. Note the message:
“Oh, Cleveland Frowns. If you only knew who exactly you were making such a big stink over. If only you knew who you called nine police departments about.”
Damn you, Ricky. God bless the internet, and congratulations to the Parkland High class of 2009.
