CHESTERFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Detroit Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson knocked on Jacob Rinehart's front door.
“Come in!” his stepmother Audrey Cox shouted from the nearby kitchen.
Hutchinson entered the home in suburban Detroit, using crutches to protect his surgically repaired left leg that was broken in two places last month.
“What's up guys?” Hutchinson asked with a grin. “How we doing?”
The wide-eyed and awestruck Rinehart was simply stunned.
“I’m sitting here and Aidan Hutchinson walks in the door," he said later that night. “And, I about dropped dead.”
The Marine, who was told he wouldn't walk again after a training accident, thought there were more than 10 visitors, multiple cameras and lights set up in his family's house because they were working on something related to his stepmother's job.
Not quite.
Cox shared her stepson's story with the Lions through the team's website, not expecting a response.
The Lions read what she wrote and reached out to Verizon, an NFL corporate sponsor, about Rinehart. The team and cellular provider orchestrated a series of surprises for him as part of Verizon Access, which creates opportunities for behind-the-scenes experiences at events such as NFL games.
Hutchinson drove about an hour to hand Rinehart four tickets to Detroit’s home game against Chicago on Thanksgiving, one of his autographed No. 97 jerseys and an Amon-Ra St. Brown No. 14 jersey.
During Hutchinson's visit, Brown connected with Rinehart via FaceTime. He invited Rinehart to choose the celebration he wanted to see when the All-Pro receiver scored against the Bears.
“That’s probably the coolest thing that’s happened to me in, like, I don’t know, 20 years, and I’ve only been alive for 20 years,” he said.
It appeared to be meaningful to Hutchinson, too.
He has regularly visited young patients in hospitals and has a special appreciation for the military because his great-grandfather was part of the World War II jungle fighting unit known as “ Merrill’s Marauders."
“It inspires everybody when everybody sees what these kids go through and how they persevered through it,” Hutchinson said, wearing a hoodie with UNBROKEN printed across his chest and Air Jordan sneakers. “And, it puts life in perspective.”
A camera crew was there to document the waves of surprises for Verizon to produce content for social media posts and a two-minute video that fans in the stands will see before next Thursday night’s home game against Green Bay.
Rinehart watched warmups at Ford Field in Detroit on Thursday morning along the sideline, where team owner Sheila Ford Hamp told him he had two tickets for the Super Bowl and St. Brown stopped by to autograph his jersey.
“He said `What's up?' and asked me if I had a TD celly for him,” Rinehart said. “I told him to do a salute, and he said he would.”
Rinehart was on the field when the Lions were introduced just before kickoff, adding to his surreal experience.
When Rinehart went to watch the game, 20 family members and friends were waiting for him in a suite.
"I guess it was a bigger surprise than I thought,” he said.
Rinehart was due for a feel-good month.
In the fall of 2023, he was two-plus months into training in South Carolina and a week away from the Marine's strenuous exercise known as “The Crucible” that caps a 13-week course when an accident left him with a spinal cord injury that paralyzed him from the neck down.
“They told me I'd never walk again,” he recalled.
Rinehart was able to walk with assistance a few months into a four-month hospital stay. After more than a year of rehab back in Michigan, he can walk on his own as early arriving fans witnessed at Ford Field on Thanksgiving.
“I really feel like I’m going to wake up and it’s all going to be a dream,” Cox said. “I cannot believe this tiny little submission I put in sparked this giant roller coaster that we’re now on.”
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Follow Larry Lage at https://apnews.com/author/larry-lage
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Larry Lage, The Associated Press
