If you’re skydiving and your parachute fails, there’s always a backup. But what if the backup fails, too? That’s when you pray that you’re jumping with a hero like Dave Hartsock, who risked his own life to save another.
Hartsock was the instructor paired with Shirley Dygert for her first ever skydive – a challenge she undertook to celebrate her 54th birthday. But the jump took a nightmarish turn when their first parachute failed to fully deploy and the backup chute got tangled up along with it.
As they were plummeting toward the Earth at 64km/h, Hartsock pulled the parachutes’ control handles to position himself underneath Dygert, hoping to break her fall when they hit the ground. His plan worked: Dygert walked away with only minor injuries, though Hartsock himself was left paralysed. He’s slowly regaining some feeling, but even in recovery he remains humble about his actions:
People keep telling me that it was a heroic thing to do…In my opinion it was just the right thing to do. I mean, I was the one who was completely responsible for her safety. What other choices were there?
There’s a trade off here. I’m left feeling a lot more sceptical about skydiving but even more optimistic about the ability of individuals to act with extraordinary courage when lives are on the line. [CBS News and Daily IQ]
Daniel
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 9:22 PMWhen i read the headline to this article, i am not joking, “kickstart my heart” by motley crue started playing in my head as i had this vision of some badass jumping out of a plane speeding his way toward her with backup on the way as she was speeding to her death… and it was all conveniently caught on video.
We can’t all be winners…
kim owens
Monday, May 17, 2010 at 12:32 PMWanna let Dave know that he is helping others such as myself. Your actions were something to respect and one thing to respect even more is your ATTITUDE. Those who struggle often can’t understand what you seem to: Focus on WHAT YOU CAN DO-NOT ON WHAT YOU CAN’T! Still take time to ‘smell the Lilacs’-when they’re brought to you? haha!
Fresh
Friday, June 11, 2010 at 7:23 AMThe real question you have to ask here is; “How did this hero manage to get his main (parachute) entangled with his reserve?” As a Tandem Skydive Instructor with over 8500 jumps myself, I know that the only way this could happen is either the gear malfunctioned totally on deployment of the main parachute (not the case) and so that means, as usual in these cases (and I’ve seen a lot of them) it was the Tandem Master at fault and most probably out of sequence handle deployment or not cutting away the main parachute ( you don’t actually physically cut the parachute } you pull the cutaway handle located on the right upper webbing located near your right shoulder, once your back in freefall (and clear of your jettisoned main parachute ) you then deploy your reserve parachute by pulling your Red Reserve Handle located near your left shoulder. As for placing himself under the pax on impact to save her life! Give me a break. Just a tip, if your going Tandem Skydiving, make sure you use a company who operates seven days a week all year round. This will ensure that the TM’s are very current and have to be on to it as the demand for competent TM’s at these organisations is met.