From Turlock to S.F., taking the long route 49ers QB Kaepernick still a hometown guy

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Fun facts and pertinent info on Colin Kaepernick, the 49ers' quarterback heir apparent, gleaned from a whirlwind tour of his hometown, Turlock:

-- Kaepernick has several tattoos. They're all Scripture-based, mostly Book of Psalms. But don't pin down Colin. Says his dad, Rick: "He was baptized Methodist, confirmed Lutheran and went to a Baptist church in Reno."

-- Nicknames? There's Kap, of course. His high school football coaches, marveling at the skinny, awkward arms and legs, called him "Levers." At Nevada, he was the Transformer. To his extended family he is Bo, as in Bo Jackson, a nickname given him at age 3 by his brother's pals, because little Colin was adept at so many sports.

-- Kaepernick was a four-sport star at Turlock's Pitman High - football, baseball, basketball and four square. On the school's concrete quad, Kaepernick and his buddies played highly competitive four square with a tennis ball at lunchtime.

-- Turlock? Just south of Modesto, just north of Merced.

-- Colin once pitched a no-hitter, rode the team bus back to Pitman and was taken directly to the hospital with pneumonia.

Landers Avenue, one of the main streets that runs through Turlock, Ca. on Wednesday May 4, 2011 The Central Valley town is home to the San Francisco 49ers second round draft pick, Colin Kaepernick. Landers Avenue, one of the main streets that runs through Turlock, Ca. on Wednesday May 4, 2011 The Central Valley town is home to the San Francisco 49ers second round draft pick, Colin Kaepernick. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close From Turlock to S.F., taking the long route 1 / 13 Back to Gallery

-- Trouble? Mischief? None. As in: zero. No chewing-gum-in-class incidents, not a single tardy. Nada. Zip ... until Kaepernick's last day at Pitman, when the dean of students caught Colin wearing a non-authorized cap and confiscated it. Seriously.

-- Last summer, Colin interned at a Reno store that sells Wolf Pack athletic gear. A woman said she wanted a Colin Kaepernick jersey for her son. "I think he's No. 10," Colin said, and rang up the sale. A few minutes later, the woman's son came into the store and said, "Hey, that's him!"

-- Kaepernick didn't play baseball in college, but three MLB teams phoned recently to say, "If this NFL labor problem doesn't get fixed ... " One baseball scout said to Rick, "You seem like an honest man. How fast do you think your son could throw now?" Said Rick: "Well, he threw 93-94 in high school. He's 4 inches taller and 60 pounds heavier. I'd fall out of my chair if he couldn't throw 98."

-- Kaepernick had a drinking problem in high school. His problem was deciding which flavor of Gatorade to drink at parties, when other kids were drinking adult beverages.

-- "Colin always had to sit in the very front of the class," says Amy Curd, his Math Analysis (pre-calc) teacher, now Pitman's assistant principal. "He always volunteered to do problems. He would work a problem on the board and (jokingly) sign his name and (uniform) number. ... Whenever I told students they could choose new seats the next day, Colin would run from his previous class to make sure he got the front seat. ... When he was in the classroom, he was in the classroom. He always wanted to be the best math student in the class. Even when he got a 96 or 98 on a test, he'd come up after and want to know what he did wrong."

-- A frightfully skinny prep quarterback, Kaepernick almost never ran. Says Pitman athletic trainer Markus Turner: "We cringed when he ran. 'Get out of bounds! Get out of bounds!' " In college, Colin became a dangerous runner. Says his then-offensive coordinator and the current Pitman head coach, Brandon Harris, "We'd see him run at Nevada and ask each other, 'Did we miss something?' "

-- Kaepernick is adopted. First Rick and Teresa had a son, Kyle, now 33. They had two more sons who died in early infancy because of heart defects. Doctors told the Kaepernicks, "No more." Too late; Teresa was pregnant and had a healthy daughter, Devon, now 29. But there was a void left by the two sons who died, so six years later, the Kaepernicks adopted Colin.

-- The family moved from Wisconsin to Turlock when Colin was 4. Mom is a retired nurse. Dad is VP of operations at Hilmar Cheese. Yes, he is a big cheese. Kyle and Devon work at Hilmar.

-- Colin has a pet tortoise named Sammy. At first, he could hold Sammy in the palm of his hand. Now Sammy weighs more than 100 pounds and eats the backyard.

-- When Pitman High opened in 2002, nobody wanted to go there, especially not athletes. Many local families go back several generations at Turlock High and were loath to abandon Bulldog tradition. "We'll make our own tradition," Kaepernick told his father. When Colin was a junior, the two schools met in football for the first time in the hyper-hyped Harvest Bowl. Pitman, a huge underdog, had no seniors. Turlock was ahead with time running out. Kaepernick led a long drive. On 4th-and-short near the Turlock goal, he fumbled the snap, somehow snatched the ball and lunged for a first down. Next play, he handed off to his best pal, Anthony Harding, for the game-winning TD. After the gun, Kaepernick's first reaction was to give a consoling hug to a distraught Bulldog. "That win was the seminal moment for this school," Pitman Principal Rod Hollars says. "It provided Pitman with instant credibility."

-- Harris once told Kaepernick, "Run any play you want." Long pass? Nah, handoff to his friend Harding.

-- Kaepernick doesn't get nervous, and plays best with a chip on his shoulder. One day, the Merced High baseball coach started yelling that Kaepernick was balking. Colin struck out the inning's final batter, walked past the coach and said, "Balk that!"

-- Dartmouth, Harvard and Yale recruited him hard, but Kaepernick's dream was to play Division I football. Sorry, no dice. San Jose State coaches dangled a scholarship, then disappeared. Oregon State expressed strong interest, then stopped calling. Tennessee told Colin, "You're the No. 1 player on our board," and invited him for a visit. A week before the trip, a Tennessee coach called to cancel the visit and rescind the scholarship offer.

-- Many D-I coaches assumed they would waste a scholarship because Kaepernick would sign a huge baseball contract. A distraught Colin asked his father, "Dad, why won't they believe me?"

-- Another problem was his funky passing mechanics. "He has a good arm," an Idaho coach told Brandon Harris, "but he doesn't have a Vandal arm."

-- The Pitman coaches didn't mess with Colin's unorthodox passing motion. Says Harris: "The first time I saw him throw, it looked real funny but it got there real fast."

-- The Nevada football coaches didn't see Kaepernick play high school football. Pitman counselor Phil Sanchez says two Wolf Pack assistant coaches did come to a basketball game. Colin, a shooting guard, jumped center, got the tip, took a backdoor alley-oop pass and barely missed a dunk attempt. One coach turned to the other and said, "That's our guy." Kaepernick was playing with a 103-degree temperature.

-- In his sophomore season at Nevada, against Utah State, Kaepernick briefly misplaced his helmet. As punishment, he was kept out of the game for almost a full quarter. When he went back in, the ball was on the enemy 37. "This ball will NOT be handed off," Rick Kaepernick said to a friend in the stands. "It will be a 37-yard touchdown." Colin faked a handoff, kept the ball and ran 37 yards.

-- Last summer, the Chicago Cubs offered Kaepernick at least $30,000 to come to Arizona for one month and throw a few bullpen sessions. He declined the offer, asking his dad, "What would that say about me as the leader of this team?"

-- Colin turned down the NFL's invitation to the draft in New York so he could enjoy the occasion with family and friends.

-- Prior to the NFL draft, Kaepernick worked out for 13 different NFL teams, including the 49ers. Only one coach (not Jim Harbaugh) suggested a change in Kaepernick's funky passing style, a very minor tweak in holding the ball.

-- The most famous Turlock athlete before Kaepernick? Ruben Hernandez, owner of It'll Grow Back barber shop, came up with Paul Larson, Cal's first All-America quarterback (1954) and briefly a Raider. Add: Brad Lesley, who pitched for the Brewers and Reds in the '80s and became a TV star in Japan. Dave Maggard, Cal shot-putter, 1968 Olympian and former Cal athletic director. And Dot Jones, a 15-time world arm-wrestling champ who now plays Shannon on "Glee."

-- Just before the draft, an ESPN researcher gathering info on Kaepernick asked coach Harris about the tattoos. Harris told her, "Look, he's a 4.3-GPA guy, from Wisconsin, with a pet tortoise. If you're looking for a story about a player overcoming the thug life, you've got the wrong guy."