Richard Kilgore was born a poor white child (name that Steve Martin movie) in the small town of Freedom, Oklahoma, then by some still unexplained quirk of fate was raised in the St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage in Calumet City, IL (recognize that place?). He entered the Army in 2001, serving as an 11B for most of his first enlistment before passing the selection process for SF. After his tour in the Army was done he went to work for a small Sheriff’s Department in the Midwest, but missed the camaraderie of military life and the chance to remove insurgents and assorted other assholes from the gene pool, so he went back in. Eventually he wound up in a National Guard Security Forces unit as a plausible cover so he could run black budget, secret squirrel type operations with his buddy Slim. Over the course of approximately a decade he has been able to leverage his position as an instructor in several disciplines and one of the country’s premiere foot-tall tactical operators to travel around the United States and the world, training and working alongside grunts, SWAT operators and other tactical professionals from an impressive array of agencies and units. He’s done everything from run PSD missions for a Marine Corps battalion commander in al Anbar Province to responding to hostage situations with NYPD’s ESU to riding along with boarding teams conducting counter-narcotic teams off the Florida coast. He’s beaten Dalton Fury at poker and still gets drunk phone calls in the middle off the night from Jack Bauer.
“Swingin’ Dick”, as he is called (his first formal military training after the basics was Air Assault School) is a warrior, and always has been. He’s been a sheepdog since he attended one of Col. Grossman’s lectures with members of the local SWAT team, back before the term sheepdog had caught on and created a whole mini-industry of morale patches and t-shirts. To this day what he heard in that class motivates him and, by virtue of his uncanny charisma and measurable force of personality, all his handlers.
Richard is so tactical he requires a special permit to visit California or New Jersey.
In addition to his work with various official and unofficial units of the DoD and Homeland Security, Richard has worked as a technical advisor for Rocco Sifredi and Ron Jeremy. However, he was apparently too distracting to their co-stars so he was let go.
A world class master of Parkeur who knows all the words to Mr. Roboto in Japanese, he was asked to star as “Smilin’ Bob” in a male enhancement video, but took a PSD job in the Philippines instead (not that anyone would’ve believed he needed the drug anyway).
Swingin’ Dick thinks happiness is going cyclic, but one of the high points in his life was when he punched Jack Idema in the face. He’s taken pictures and video for Robert Young Pelton and has sung the Star Spangled Banner at a Yankees—Cubs game. He helped capture Charles Ponzi, Eduardo de Valfierno, Frank Abagnale, Robert Hendy-Freegard, Freddy Benson & Lawrence Jamieson. He’s got an extensive collection of autographs, including one on a napkin from Mikhail Kalashnikov and another on a business card from Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Swingin’ Dick is hoplologist and never ends a sentence with a preposition. He’s a direct descendent of the Leander “Blighty” Kilgore who so inspired Rudyard Kipling, and his great uncle was an Aircav commander in Vietnam made famous in a movie. He’s studied tactics and firearms with Louis Villalobos, Jeff Tepich, Jeff Sears, Phil Hansen, Jim Cirillo, David Scott-Donelan and Ken Hackathorne, but to his great regret was never able to attend a class taught by Jeff Cooper. He is just as proud of his years as a grunt as he is of his time as a snake-eater and then ‘Defender’, though he still thinks AFSF cops are the most poorly managed, under-utilized and misused career field in that branch of service.
Swinging Dick hates zombies. He hates them because they’re creepy and he hates them because a head shot on a moving target can be pretty difficult if you’re hung over. Swingin’ Dick likes chocolate pie, but not meringue. He’s visited Cape Town just to go water-skiing off Seal Island – with an open, bleeding, shaving cut on his chin. He’s attended every level of Combat and Tactical Tracking taught by David Scott-Donelan, holds a black belt in Aikido, enjoys the occasional bout of Escrima, loves long walks on the beach if there’s a hot chick involved and has won two AVN awards.
Given the chance, Swingin’ Dick would liked to meet General Peter Walls and Simo Häyhä. He’d have liked to meet Nemo too (the K9 from Vietnam, not the cartoon fish with the fucked up flipper). He still hopes to meet Billy Waugh in person, and wouldn’t mind having lunch with Bill O’Reilly and discussing matters of foreign policy and vocabulary.
Richard loves his country, his comrades and Weber’s Root Beer in Tulsa. He road trips as often as possible to have breakfast at the little café inside the Conoco on Highway 43 between Nevada, MO and Ft. Scott, KS (right outside Deerfield). He hopes to continue kicking doors until all of his handlers retire, after which he’ll probably retire himself, possibly to a shelf on the wall in some kid’s bedroom. He will undoubtedly continue to indulge in high risk fun with Slim right up until the end, if he doesn’t kill Slim first for constantly reorganizing his stuff.
He will put an end to you if you use the word doll instead of action figure.