Artist Michael Rubino has impregnated 19 women, that he knows of, in California, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, Arkansas, Ohio, Colorado, Maryland, and the Cayman Islands.
However, he’s never actually been intimate with those 19 women.
Rubino is sperm donor, Donor 929 to be exact. His foray into sperm donation started in the mid-80s when he and his then-wife decided they wanted to have children, according to The Orange County Register.
He and his wife soon found that they weren’t able to get pregnant, even with the help of in vitro fertilization. He realized that many of the men in his support groups were infertile and wanted to help couples who needed sperm to get pregnant.
So, he and his wife decided that Rubino would donate to the California Cryobank.
When he was filling out paperwork at the sperm bank he was asked whether or not he wanted his offspring to be allowed to know his identity and contact him.
“I want it clear,” he told the Register, “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. I was not going to be a dad, but I was going to be part of the gene pool.”
Rubino donated sperm until he was 37 when he found out that two of his donations were successful and that he had two children living somewhere in the world.
He met his first child in 2014 after getting a phone call asking if he was Donor 929. It was then that he met 6-year-old Jake.
“I fell in love with that kid instantly,” Rubino said, getting emotional. “He was the greatest kid in the world. He told his grandmother he made a new best friend.”
Rubino got to spend more time with Jake and watched him on weekends and holidays. Eventually, the boy would spend entire summers with his dad and would pick his son up at school.
Jake’s mother Karen eventually split the cost of a house with Rubino where they have their own bedrooms but all live together.
“I know it’s kind of weird,” said Jake. “They’re my mom and dad.”
Rubino, who couldn’t be happier as a full-time dad, eventually went on to meet 19 of his other children.
“They’re all great kids,” Rubino told PEOPLE. “Every one of them is brilliant in their own way. I’m really lucky.”
You can check out Rubino’s reunion with his 19 children in the clip from Inside Edition below.
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