'Balloon Boy' Family Obsessed with Fame?

This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," October 16, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: The family at the center of the balloon hysteria is no stranger to the spotlight. The Heene family was on the reality show "Wife Swap." Now, in the show, Richard Heene and another man switched wives for a week. And Richard ended up showing his angry side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD HEENE: With all due respect, OK?

SHEREE SILVER, "WIFE SWAP": Really? When?

RICHARD HEENE: Had you gone through and lived the life that Mayumi did, without complaining and without being lazy, I would have sat right there and showed you the same respect.

SILVER: Richard...

RICHARD HEENE: I'm going to go in there and fix my kids some food! I'm going to have a ham sandwich, OK?

SILVER: No, it's a vegetarian meal, and it's my rule, OK? They're not eating any ham, anything.

RICHARD HEENE: Come on, boys. Let's eat! Let's eat! Let's eat! (INAUDIBLE) Stop it! You just touched my meat again!

SILVER: (INAUDIBLE) did you not hear the rules?

RICHARD HEENE: What are you doing? Look at you, man!

SILVER: Richard, I told you no meat. Well, you'll be cleaning it up because...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAN SUSTEREN: Joining us live is Sheree Silver. She spent a week as Richard's reality wife on the show. Good evening, Sheree. And Sheree, as we sort of watched that, he was sort of angry. I was always sort of thinking that that's just part of the show biz of the reality show and it's sort of amped up a little bit. Was it or was it not?

SILVER: Nobody amped anybody up, Greta. I mean, you know, Richard reacted to things. He definitely got angry more than, you know, normal. And there were times when he was very aggressive and there was times that he was very nice. He just flipped backwards and forwards between being both kinds of characters.

VAN SUSTEREN: OK, an angry person doesn't necessary that a person is going to put his child in a balloon and launch it. But you know, the (INAUDIBLE) people never do that. Now, what -- are you suspicious of him? And if so, why?

SILVER: No, I'm not suspicious. My initial feeling was that, Oh, my God, what have you done, Richard? But then when I thought about it more, I realized that knowing him, I couldn't imagine that he would tell the whole country that his son was up in the balloon. I mean, that -- I just can't feel that he would do that.

VAN SUSTEREN: In your experience, is he a loving father, loves his children and not reckless towards his children?

SILVER: Well, there's a lot of definitions of what a loving father is, and so I personally don't think a father that loves his kids should be taking them into tornadoes. But then again, you know, maybe I'm too protective over my kids, so -- but I really -- I did address that with him at one point. I said, Richard, why don't you just do the tornadoes? Why do you have to bring the children into the tornadoes? And his quote back to me was, Well, Sheree, I want them to witness everything. What if something happens and they don't get to see it? And I said, yes, and what if you blow up and you die and they get to witness that, too?

But you know, he absolutely is fearless and he's raising the children to be fearless. And I think this is an example of a very important lesson that sometimes you have to be careful and you have to be protective and you have to know where your kids are. And this is all part of being a parent. A lot of times, I felt that Richard was like a child. You know, he was like a child that...

VAN SUSTEREN: What about...

SILVER: Go ahead.

VAN SUSTEREN: What's Falcon like? What's Falcon like?

SILVER: He's like his father. He's absolutely fast, fast, quick, quick, quick, loves to jump everywhere, loves to run and hide, I mean, literally is the type of child that you would actually see that would go into the spaceship.

There was one point where I had to hold the spaceship and clean it and carry it, and Falcon ran into the spaceship and hid in there. So I mean, that is something that he would do. So it wasn't surprising that maybe Richard might have thought he was in there because that's the type of child Falcon is.

VAN SUSTEREN: What does he do -- besides being on this ABC reality show, what is his occupation? What does he do? I'm just curious.

SILVER: Well, he had me do his so-called job. He had me going around the neighborhood and delivering fliers, and he told me that he's been a contractor, but he does all the fix-it work. But he was not even working. I don't think he was working much. It's probably something he does a couple of days a week. It's not something that he does all the time.

VAN SUSTEREN: Sheree, thank you.

SILVER: Thank you.

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