'The face of Sam's Club' in Fort Collins looks back on life amid terminal cancer diagnosis

I've probably seen Rick Walberg's face more times than I can count, but I never officially met him until late last month, when his daughter, Brenda Walberg, invited me inside her dad's cozy west Fort Collins home.

After rounding the corner, I quickly spotted Rick positioned in his electric hospital bed, which takes up most of his bedroom.

Painted landscapes of faraway places dotted the walls around him — a desert vista, a wildflower-dusted meadow, a quaint town scene colored by the oranges and yellows of fall. Like most of his days now, he was flanked by Brenda, his only child, on one side and his childhood best friend, Neil Beck, on the other.

After Rick, 65, was diagnosed with stage 3-4 bladder cancer back in August, it quickly became clear he was too weak for surgical intervention or treatment. He came home and entered hospice care in early September, Brenda said.

Rick's family and friends sprung into action, and his home started to see a revolving door of visitors to make sure someone was always at his bedside.

But there was another challenge ahead, according to Brenda.

Growing up, she recalled always getting stopped when out and about with her dad. He's a nearly lifelong resident of Fort Collins and, in his younger days, was always at his parents' downtown shops, Marlen's Texaco and Marlen's Tire Service. More recently, he was the "tire guy" and eventual door greeter at the city's Sam's Club.

It didn't matter if they were in downtown Fort Collins or at a flea market in Denver, according to Brenda. Rick always got recognized.

"We'd get stopped every two seconds, because everyone knows Dad," she said.

So how could she possibly update everyone on Rick's cancer diagnosis and decision to enter hospice care?

"There was no way in the world that I could reach out to everybody," Brenda said.

A newspaper article would have to do.

'The face of Sam's Club'

When a friend of Rick's first alerted the Coloradoan to his cancer diagnosis late last month, I knew immediately who they were talking about.

As a former Sam's Club shopper, I had shown Rick my membership card plenty of times while walking into the south Fort Collins big box store.

Rick was often stationed at its entrance in his power wheelchair, his long, sandy silver hair gathered into two neat braids on his shoulders.

After decades of being "the tire guy" at various shops around town, including eight years in Sam's Club's own tire shop, Rick spent the last 15 years greeting its customers.

"I was the first face that they saw when they came in," Rick said proudly.

"People have said he’s the ‘face of Sam’s Club,' " Brenda added.

After working there for more than 23 years, Rick's health deteriorated this summer, getting to the point where he was in and out of the hospital and unable to work.

Since officially leaving his post at the store, Sam's Club customers have been asking about him "nonstop," Rick's co-worker and neighbor Renee Marconi told the Coloradoan.

"He's an iconic figure at Sam's," Marconi continued. "His smile radiates and he remembers people by name. He's a sweet, sweet soul ... always has a smile on his face."

Marconi has resorted to giving customers Rick's cell phone number so they can catch up with him while he rests at home.

"Everybody and their brother misses him," she said.

Growing up in Fort Collins

Rick's first job in Fort Collins dates back more than half a century, when driving up to a service station meant triggering a bell that would let the workers inside know you were in need of service.

For Rick, that meant running out to help pump gas, wash windows and check air in tires at his parent's gas station, Marlen's Texaco.

Rick's parents, Marlen and Patricia Walberg, opened the service station a year after they moved their family to Fort Collins in 1968. At the time, Rick was 9, his older brother Wally was 11 and his younger brother David was six.

Rick remembers leaping into action when a customer would drive up. Later, he helped his mom with the business's bookkeeping.

Fort Collins was a small town back then — "maybe 50,000 people," Rick surmised. Close. There were 43,337 residents recorded in the city in 1970, according to the Fort Collins history archive.

Aside from helping at Marlen's Texaco, Rick said he spent his childhood days trekking to Sheldon Lake to go fishing. When his family moved to a new Midtown neighborhood when Rick was in the fifth grade, he quickly befriended Beck, a sixth grader who lived next door.

They spent their childhood walking over to Warren Lake to fish for carp or riding their bikes on the dirt hills that eventually became the site of the city's first Kmart. The department store opened to much fanfare in 1971 and was demolished earlier this year to make way for a new King Soopers.

Rick started at Rocky Mountain High School in 1973 — the year it opened it doors, consolidating sophomores and juniors from Fort Collins and Poudre High Schools.

In the end, he didn't have enough credits to graduate on time — "can I blame some of it on Neil?" he asked playfully, poking at his friend. So, he set aside his feelings about his favorite dirt hills getting developed and took a job in the toys, books and hobbies section of Kmart.

He later left for Markley Motors and was working there when he got news that would alter his life. After always having a limp, struggling to stand up without help and never being able to do some things the other kids could do — like climbing a rope — Rick was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.

Doctors told him he would be in a wheelchair within the next five to 10 years.

“I was 21 years old. I thought 10 years was an eternity, so I wasn’t too worried about it," he said.

He started using a three-wheeled scooter to get around in the mid- to late 1980s when he was working at M&O Tires.

Around that same time, Rick said Wally asked him to come work at Marlen's Tire Service — a tire shop their parents opened at 243 Jefferson St. in the late 1970s. Wally purchased the business after Marlen's 1987 death and wanted his brother to come back and work its front counter.

Rick was always the talker of the two — "the guy with the gift of gab," he said.

It's something I picked up on right after meeting him last month. Even laying in a hospital bed riddled with pain from his advancing cancer, Rick was constantly cracking jokes.

It made sense for him to return to Marlen's Tire Service, where he could interact with customers and order tires from the comfort of his scooter, Rick continued.

Rick went from Marlen's Tires to Sam's Club's tire shop in 2000. He worked there for roughly eight years before moving to the store's front door.

"He was a fixture there," Rick's stepfather, Reid Jacob, said. "People were always glad to see him."

'A punch in the gut'

This summer, Brenda said she started seeing a change in her dad. He was despondent — something she owed to Rick's mother, Patricia, and brother, Wally, dying unexpectedly within a day of each other in mid-May.

A couple months later, however, Rick's health issues would come to light. He was taken to the hospital in mid-August, where he fell into a five-day coma and was ultimately diagnosed with bladder cancer, which was impacting his kidney function, Brenda said.

Rick's diagnosis was "a punch in the gut" to the family, especially after the unexpected losses of his mom and brother, Jacob said.

Since he wasn't strong enough for surgery or treatment, Rick decided to enter hospice care when he was discharged from the hospital in early September. Now, he's trying to stay as comfortable as possible. That typically means spending his days in bed with his dog, Po, at his feet. His wheelchair is too painful to sit in, he said.

"He's a tough guy," Brenda said. "He's always come out of everything he's even been thrown his whole life. We have a Superman cape out in the living room, and that's something we've always said — he’s going to put on his Superman cape and we’re going to come out of this," Brenda said, sitting at her dad's side.

"And I still thought partially that Superman cape would come on and we'd come out of it," she continued. "It was a harsh reality a couple weeks ago (when) something just clicked in my head, and I realized that no matter what, this is a real thing and I'm really going to lose him."

"You'll have to wear that cape," Rick interjected. "It'll be OK."

The room turned quiet, but not for long.

Within moments, Rick was trying to lighten the mood.

This time, it was with a story about Jolly Time — an arcade in the Foothills mall he always took Brenda to.

"We would find our favorite games and play them over and over until we won all these tickets," he said. "Then we would rob 'em blind."

"We had so many of those stuffed white Coca-Cola bears," Brenda recalled of their arcade spoils.

"I had tickets coming out of the floorboard of my van for years!" Rick added, a smile back on his face.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: 'The face of Sam's Club' looks back on life amid terminal cancer bout