Usually pre-immortals aren't told about what's in store. I can't think off hand off a case where they told somebody what they were going to be. It's a matter of letting them live their lives normally. The only thin that triggers immortality is a violent death. So you could conceivably grow old and die. If you were to get sick and die, you'd just die permanently. In Highlander The Raven series, Amanda actually shoots a pre-immortal because he was poisoned and he would have stayed dead supposedly. There's much discussion on the point of just what constitutes a violent death [g]

Richie is alive in my Bloodties universe as well. Only because I started the series when the show was still on the air and wrote a story set in the future that had Richie in it. Then they killed him off!