In the strange and happy life of Donor 929, emails can mean adventure.
Last week, for example, Donor 929 got an email from a teenage girl in Denver. She included a picture of herself in high school graduation cap and gown. She said she’s considering a history major in college. And there was the other thing.
The email explained, if he is indeed Donor 929, he is her father.
Mike Rubino, an artist from Los Angeles, is known across the United States and beyond as Donor 929. This email contact did not catch him by surprise.
It was the 19th such email or phone call he has received, and there could be more coming. He has 19 photos of smiling children on a shelf in his living room. His sperm has impregnated women in California, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, Arkansas, Ohio, Colorado and Maryland. Oh, and the Cayman Islands, a British territory.
19.
As you get your head around that giant number – 19 children is enough to field two baseball teams with an umpire – you have to realize it’s not giant at all. Some sperm donors, the super potent among us, have fathered as many as 200 children. It’s not unusual to reach 150. These are called “offspring groups” or “half-sibling groups,” according to Wendy Kramer, founder of the Donor Sibling Registry.
Kramer said there is no way of knowing how many donors have produced how many babies in America because parents don’t always report that they have received help in having a child. In 1988, the Office of Technology Assessment estimated that donor insemination produced 30,000 babies in the previous year. Since then, the estimates have doubled. But Kramer warns that those estimates are so flawed as not to be remotely accurate.
“Mike is just a really nice guy,” Kramer said. “He’s the kind of guy everybody wishes their donor would be.”
Her organization has more than 54,000 members and has connected more than 14,000 fathers with their offspring. She said she wouldn’t describe what happens between donors and children as “love.” The donors weren’t parents. They didn’t hold their children during thunderstorms, they didn’t take them to dance practice or put money in their college fund. They weren’t there for first steps, first words or first days of school.
“I’d say they care about each other,” Kramer said. “They have a very special bond.”
Rubino enjoys these unexpected emails, the first contact, because it opens his life to so many possibilities. It means awkward recognition at the airport, lunch to discuss personality traits, trips to Disneyland or the La Brea Tar Pits to get to know each other. It means followup visits and building a connection.
“I am loving this,” Rubino said.
It means, loosely defined as it may be, Donor 929 has a family, just like he always wanted.
And once out of 19 offspring, it meant something so much more.
Desire to meet
Mike Rubino married in 1985.
He worked for awhile at a fossil store selling dinosaur bones. Then he got into real estate.
After several years, he and his wife made a decision.
“Let’s have a kid,” Rubino remembers saying. “Just one. We knew we could support one.”
Sadly, pregnancy wasn’t happening. His wife had surgical interventions. They attempted in vitro fertilization three times. After years of unsuccessful attempts, they started attending a support group for infertile couples. That’s when Mike noticed that half the men in the group had trouble producing sperm.
He, as you may guess, did not fall into that category.
“It was an eye-opener,” Rubino said.
About the same time, he saw a story about the California Cryobank on television news. They collect, freeze and sell sperm. He talked it over with his wife and decided to donate sperm to help couples like those he had met.
Before his first donation, he filled out a form asking if he would like to meet any of his future offspring if they wanted to meet him when they became adults.
“I want it clear,” he said, “I want to meet them. I thought it would be awesome. I envisioned these 18-year-old kids knocking on my door, and I would go out to coffee with them.”
He was paid $50 per donation, and he said he donated as much as twice per week in Westwood.
“I was not going to be a dad, but I was going to be part of the gene pool,” Rubino said.
His marriage ended in divorce in 1995. But his family was just beginning.
Relationships start
What Mike Rubino didn’t know at the time was how attractive he was on the sperm market.
He had no genetic disorders. He was an artist educated at Berkeley. He was thin. And he had blue eyes. Though women never saw a picture of him, Donor 929 proved to be quite a catch.
He donated until he was 35. In the sperm donation business, 35 is usually the retirement age.
Usually.
When he was 37, he got a phone call from California Cryobank. Two women had requested more of his sperm. The rule was that even at his advanced age, his sperm could be requested if the women had been successful with his first donation. He was un-retired, and he was paid double ($100) for each donation.
Wait, did you catch that? Two successful donations meant “I had at least two children existing on the planet,” Rubino said.
That’s the first indication he had that he was a bio dad.
His life was about to change.
In 2004, he got phone calls from two women – one in Massachusetts and the other in San Diego – asking if he was Donor 929.
The first of his offspring he met was a 6-year-old San Diego boy named Jake, who loved dinosaurs and wanted to visit the La Brea Tar Pits.
Jake had been told that Rubino was a friend of the family.
“I fell in love with that kid instantly,” Rubino said. “He was the greatest kid in the world.”
Mike Rubino got emotional when he talked about Jake. He sat on the couch at his home, surrounded by pictures of his children, who are all adults now. After that first meeting with Jake in 2004 … “I need a minute,” Rubino said, covering his face.
“He told his grandmother he made a new best friend,” Rubino said.
Over the years, he developed relationships with most of his kids. He keeps in email contact with all of them. He hasn’t yet met five of them in person. Not all of them look like him, but a couple really do. Four of them are artists. He can tell you all their names without checking notes.
Aaron, Leah, Preciousmarie, Jake, Charley, Isabel, Avery, Xander, Nathan, Rachel, Danielle, Keevyn, Gabe, Nick, Tom, Lila, Shane, Cole and Genevieve.
Rubino calls them “my clan.”
“Don’t ask me their birthdays,” he said.
Many of them do one thing that makes him very happy.
They call him Dad.
“I didn’t ask them to, but they did,” he said. “It’s fantastic for me. They’re all healthy and happy.”
Becoming Dad
The first boy he met, Jake, was raised by a single mom named Karen Strassberg.
So slowly but surely, Donor 929 became an actual big-D Dad. They told Jake that his “new best friend” was actually his birth father. Rubino started watching Jake for some weekends and holidays. Then Jake started spending entire summers with his father.
Karen and Jake moved to Santa Monica and she got a job as a paralegal.
Rubino started picking up his son at middle school.
And then in 2013, cue the stringed music, Karen and Mike decided to buy a house together. They split the cost 50-50. They each have their own bedroom.
Jake has two parents under the same roof.
“He’s nice, easy going, helpful,” Jake said of his father. “I know it’s kind of weird. They’re my mom and dad.”
Jake is 19 and is attending Santa Monica Community College. He wants to go to UCLA to study science.
“I couldn’t be happier,” Rubino said. “I’m a full-time dad.”
