‘I want to do this as long as I can’: former EHS wrestler seeks kidney

Published 10:00 am Thursday, March 26, 2026

Rich Peterson was a kid who could never stay still — so when he was cut from his seventh grade basketball team, he turned straight around and started wrestling instead.

At the time, he just needed to be active; he played a sport almost every season when he was a student at the Enumclaw School District.

But wrestling became something special to him, and turned into a generation-spanning tradition that leaves him with one dream: to be able to give his grandkids a medal when they place at state.

“That’s something I look forward to,” he said, his breaking voice belying the understatement. And then came a chuckle that attempted to paint over a painful reality. “… I just hope I make it that far.”

Peterson wrestled under the Hornet banner from 1976 to 1980 and made it to state several times, although the best he ever placed was fifth.

But while getting a medal is certainly an achievement, winning was never the true purpose of the sport for him.

“It made me feel good about myself. It made me feel good about what I’m doing. I just felt good being a wrestler,” he said. “And wrestling with Shelly Thiel was definitely one of the things at the top of what I did in my lifetime.”

Thiel was EHS’ wrestling coach for 1969 to 1988, and then took over as the district’s Athletics Director; he eventually moved on to be the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) West Central District Director in 2000 for 17 years. He was inducted into the WIAA Hall of Fame for his coaching in 2023.

One moment that stood out to Thiel was at the very end of Peterson’s high school career.

“We’re coming back from the match, back to the hotel, and on the way back, he was crying. Crying in the back seat,” Thiel recalled. “He knew it was over. No more wrestling… because he wasn’t good enough to go on to college… but the fact that he realized of those six years, from junior high to high school, had a big impact on him.

“He probably looked back and said, ‘Gee all that time and all that energy and now it’s over. And that, to me, really shared his real strong feelings about the sport and what it did for him,” Thiel continued.

Peterson did, in fact, try to take his wrestling talents — all 125 pounds of it — to Eastern Washington University.

Unfortunately, he broke his ankle early on while playing football right after his wrestling coach preternaturally warned him that would happen; Peterson left college after one year and then worked in constriction up in Alaska.

He returned home eight years later to build a house in Cumberland.

Peterson connected back with wrestling when he began coaching at the Enumclaw Junior High in 1997, and soon after, Thiel offered him a job as a WIAA floor manager and put specifically in charge of organizing the Mat Classic every February for the high schoolers wrestling their way to a state title.

“It’s something I look forward to every year,” he said. “Third week of February… I’m waiting to go. I want to do this as long as I can.”

Thiel called him his “right arm” for his work at the Mat Classic.

“He’s right there every year, Johnny on the spot to coordinate the mat crew,” he continued.

But there’s serious doubt that Peterson will be able to do this for much longer, let alone for another seven years until his grandsons may grace those mats.

Peterson was diagnosed in the early 1990s with polycyctic kidneys, and nearly two years ago exactly, both of them were removed; he said both kidneys weighed about 25 pounds total.

“Each one of them were as big as a prime rib,” Peterson said. “… I could hardly breathe anymore.”

(For reference, the average male kidney a quarter to a third of a pound and are only between 10 to 14 centimeters in length.)

Peterson said he was on the donor list for years, but his heart had taken a beating after years of dialysis (he started treatment in 2018) and was operating at such low efficiency that he was taken off.

He’s since started new medication to help his heart recover, and it’s now healthy enough that he was placed back on the donor list — but only just, and it’s been almost a year since his doctor said he’d receive a kidney “any day.”

“It took a lot of my willpower away. It took a lot of my fight away… when you have a surgeon tell you ‘any day,’ and her we are into the ninth month,” Peterson said, adding that if his heart’s condition worsens, he’ll be again removed from the donor list. “… It’s been a tough time.”

While Peterson has become pessimistic about his future, Thiel is adamant about finding a way to help his former student regain his health and continue bringing his passion for wrestling to the state tournament and student athletes.

“Rich has a life ahead of him,” he said. “… The fact that he really sees that the sport of wrestling does so much for others as well, and for him to pay a big part in what he’s been going at the Mat Classic, tells you a lot about his personality.”

Anyone looking to donate a kidney can contact Peterson at 206-793-8260.