“Please meet Jennifer & Steve Helffrich…

Jennifer & Steve Helffrich

Jennifer, Steve & Friends

Steve as Tandem Master

On Saturday, April 10, 2010, during a normal skydive, Steve experienced a double malfunction (failure of both the main and reserve parachutes to fully deploy and/or inflate) and was flown via Life Flight to the only trauma center within 150 miles, Regional Medical Center (also known as ‘The Med’) in Memphis, Tennessee.

Steve sustained multiple life threatening injuries including damage to his aorta (the most serious of his injuries), punctured/deflated left lung, dislocated/broken right hip, and broken ribs on the right side (#5 thru #9).

Since being admitted into the trauma ICU, Steve has undergone several surgeries including vascular surgery to repair his aorta, the insertion of 6 chest tubes total, as well as surgery last week to remove excess fluid and infection surrounding his left lung.

Known by many as the “Mom and Dad” of the drop zone, Jen & Steve are always doing kind things for others while expecting nothing in return.  Most of us that skydive with them spend every weekend sharing our passion for the sport and the amazing friendships that have been established.  To a majority of us, they are our extended family.  Jen & Steve are both amazing skydivers, coaches, and most of all, friends – sharing this zest for life with anyone and everyone that will listen to them speak about the sport.

In this time of need, those of us that are friends, family, acquaintances, and those that will never “jump out of a perfectly good airplane,” have the opportunity to show them our support – whether it be through well wishes, cards, private prayer/church prayer lists, and/or donations.

Thankfully, Jen & Steve have insurance but with an accident of this severity, there are numerous additional incurred bills/daily hardships.  In order to show support, the Helffrich Benefit Fund has been established through First Tennessee Bank.

There are 3 options of how you can donate to this Fund:

#1:        Visit ANY First Tennessee Bank branch with the following account information:
Helffrich Benefit Fund (Account #182355531)
** NOTE: To find the closest First Tennessee Bank location to you, CLICK HERE **

#2:        Visit https://public.serviceu.com/payment/default.asp?OrgID=12725&PaymentID=7920

Enter contact information & banking information
(Check #/Checking Account Number/Routing Number)

** NOTE: This payment option is through David P. Smith’s Company, ServiceU Corporation, whose business is processing secure online transactions. **

#3:        If you are unable to visit a First Tennessee Bank location, do not have a branch in your area and/or do not wish to donate online, a check made out to Helffrich Benefit Fund can be sent to:

David P. Smith
1154 Talamore Cove
Collierville, TN  38017

Should you wish to send a card to Jen & Steve, please address them to:

David P. Smith
Attn:  Helffrich Family
1154 Talamore Cove
Collierville, TN  38017″

Current Update: He finally made it home last week. As it turned out he was really, really lucky!! It was really touch and go for a while there. He is now up and able to move around to a degree with a walker. And is very positive about life!!

But the running tally was 3 surgeries, 9 chest tubes (at different times), 31 days in ICU, 1 night in a regular room, 2 nights in Trauma Step Down ICU, countless x-rays and CT’s, a stent in the aorta, a trach, several broken bones all healing and about 35 lbs dropped. Plus 2 weeks in an rehab center.

The family could still use the financial help until he is able to get back up and to work. Any help would be great!!

He actually was able to get up and made it out to the DZ last weekend (didn’t jump naturally, but his wife got in a couple). The incident didn’t scare him away from the sport in the least. I think that he will be more involved now than ever. In training, coaching and teaching safety!! I can’t wait until he is able to be back in the air with us…

Peter’s family would like his ashes to return to Hungary, so there are a few fundraisers to help make that happen. Tanya Hannington is organizing an auction at the Ranch in New York. Prizes – so far – include 2 Blue Skies Mag subscriptions, Sun Path gear bags, reserve pack jobs, framed photographs, coach jumps and tons more. Donate something if you can and get to the Ranch to bid on some cool stuff.

Here are some photos that Peter G sent us and my slacker ass never got around to doing anything with.

The story he sent was,

“On September 6th during the infamous Skydive New England Tiki Bar Boogie freeflyers set an official Maine state Head Down record. The jump was part of 3 day freefly bender. With Travis Fienhage and Andy Malchiodi from SoCal Converge on hand organizing head up, head down, angle flying, and spaceball jumps it was only natural to throw a record in there. After determining that there was no official record it was decided to put together an 8-way round that would launch right out the door slot perfect. Local New England flyers Adam Laware, Chris McNaughton, Mark Rouillard, PJ Jackson and Dave Swanson combined with Dave Colucci, and the SoCal guys to put a record in the books on the first attempt. To ensure all went as planned Peter G. was on hand to get the perfect shot.”

Sorry, guys, to take so long to get that up. BSBD, Peter G.

The PayPal info again is:
LT197044060003600396
Inga Gaizauskiene
AB SEB bankas
Gedimino pr. 12, LT- 01103 Vilnius
Banko Kodas 70440
SWIFT Kodas CBVILT2X
email account info: gaizauskiene.inga@hotmail.com

From: “Eugenio Dominguez G.”
To: Helmut Cloth, “Rob ‘Dutch’ Kendall”
Date: 12/21/2009 01:11 AM
Subject: Back in the air!!!!!!!!!!!!

Helmut and Rob:

Hope you remember me! , im Just writing you guys to say Hi, and tell that im in the last part of my healing. Everything is OK, just my eye is not closing perfectly, but is a very small detail.

Yesterday I came back to the air!!!!!!!!! Yes, was my first jump since my accident!!, I had a tandem first, and then fly with my friend, doing some good grips in belly.

Im completely happy !! im been waiting this since june 10th!!!

Thanks again for everything and for working every day to improve details to save more and more people.

During the surgery I had my nice suit all broken, so im desingning a new one, and Its completely important for me to have CYPRES written on it. I hope there´s no problem to do that.

I really never gonna forget my accident, and the answer of how i didn´t explode on the floor, is CYPRES.

Cypress is gonna live with me for ever.

OK, hoping you guys are doing Ok, having some nice jumps, Best Regards

Keno

Photo courtesy of Skydive Midwest

Giedrius “G” Kasiulynas was injured during a training jump at the World Cup in South Africa and is currently in critical condition. Although he is on staff at Skydive Midwest in Wisconsin, his family is in Lithuania, where he is originally from. They need to get to South Africa to make medical decisions about G’s life, so an account has been set up to help them make the trip.

Julie from Skydive Midwest sent us this information this morning:

The info for his sister; Inga’s PayPal account, for donations: gaizauskiene.inga@gmail.com

LT197044060003600396

Her other info:

Inga Gaizauskiene
AB SEB bankas
Gedimino pr. 12, LT-01103 Vilnius
SWIFT Kodos CBVILZX

We’d like to publish a look at Eli’s life and contributions to the sports of skydiving and BASE jumping for the October issue—contact us at lara@blueskiesmag.com if you have anything you’d like to share about his many, many achievements or how he’s impacted your life.

Blue skies, Eli—may you fly in peace forever.

I started Static-line and had to do 7 static-line jumps before I could do my first freefall. When I finally got to do my first freefall, we went to 4,500ft AGL and I was supposed to do a 5 sec delay, then pull the ripcord. My jumpmaster jumped with me, but as I left the plane I started a left spin. My jumpmaster had no AAD and I was spinning so fast that he couldn’t get in and stop the spin for fear of being knocked unconscious. In my mind I was thinking “I have to get stable” and not thinking….. PULL. And I never did. I never pulled the ripcord and I had about a 26 sec. freefall from 4500 ft. Do the math!

Wow! (Thank God for Cypress) my AAD fired around 1000 ft AGL and my jumpmaster and the people (including my wife at the time) on the ground watching for my 5 sec pull were freaking! People on the ground couldn’t see my reserve opening because I was about a mile off course and below the tree line. It actually says in my logbook “Jumpmaster deployed at 1100 feet…… student was still spinning”. Everyone thought that I and the jumpmaster went in.

As it turned out, my reserve opened with extreme-multiple line twists from the spin and as I was kicking out of the twists, I was headed for the tree line. I knew I was going in the trees but I couldn’t steer clear because of the line twist, so as I came into the top of a 70ft pine tree I wrapped my arms around the trunk…which was small at the top and I held on.

The canopy rested in the tree and I unhooked my harness and shimmed down to the ground. Police, ambulance, rescue and fire Trucks arrived a few minutes later and wanted to know where the body was of the person whose chute never opened. People in the houses across the street from the woods had called 911 and reported two people whose chutes never opened. I had to do my practice ripcord pulls over, which meant about four more static-line jumps before another freefall, but I made it and I’ve been in the sport for ten years. I’m now a Tandem Instructor and I have over 1,100 jumps. I had to swallow my pride to go back the next weekend and tell them I was ready to continue my training and for a long-time I was called “Dead-Man-Walking”, but the joy I get from this sport is well worth the pride I swallowed to continue jumping.

May God Bless your mag as he has blessed me with this sport and please send me a copy of the first print of….. Blue Skies Magazine!
Take care and blue skies to you…..

Dale L. Carter D-24357

Have a similar story to Dale’s? What kind of advice would you give a new student who just did the same thing? Share your reactions in the comments below.

The reserve deployment was as clean as anyone could hope for. Fractions of a second after pulling both handles, I looked up to find a perfectly inflated reserve. The Skyhook, and more importantly, my rigger (who happens to be my wife) had done their job perfectly. “Thanks Babe!” I shouted. Then, after stowing my handles and getting a bead on my main, I turned my attention to putting myself on the ground. At 1500 feet, I still had lots of time to choose a landing spot. Four stood out, all with their own issues. First I spotted a road, but being gravel, I’d hate to get torn up should I slide in or do a PLF. Next to the road was a ditch. Radiating bright green, I figured it’d be covered in soft grass, but I didn’t know its slope and worried of rolling down the hill. Then there was the barnyard, but after spotting what looked like a washer, dryer, and discarded automotive parts, I worried not only about hitting shit, but about the goat-roping hillbillies who might see me as a present from heaven. So, I chose door number four: the cornfield. Being native to the upper midwest, I was accustomed to landing in corn every now and again. I figured “What the hell, it’s not like I haven’t done this before.”

I set myself up on an upwind final, to land just a few rows in from the road. The thought being that once I landed I wouldn’t have to walk far to get out of the field. Everything was going fine, and then I flared for the top of the corn. WHAM! I dropped like a stone. I don’t know what exactly just happened, but it happened so fast that all of a sudden I found myself on the ground, on my ass, buried in eight-foot stalks. Then the pain hit. I had heard a CRACK on landing, but had hoped it was a cornstalk breaking. It wasn’t the corn. My leg had snapped. A quick feel above my left ankle confirmed it. There was a bulge where no bulge should have been, plus the fact that my foot went one way while the leg went another wasn’t a good sign. All sorts of obscenities flew from my mouth, followed by whimpers of pain, and then thoughts of: “Well, I better get my shit off before the paramedics come and cut it off.”

All told, I spent about forty-five minutes in the corn that day. The time went fast; I had friends to keep me company. First, there was Fred, the neighbor who saw me land and heard my cries for help when he came looking for me. Then there was the dz staff member. Joel was his name, I think. Good guy who knew enough to spot a fracture when he saw it and call the ambulance for me. And, of course, there were the paramedics. Nice people, but a little resistant to my charm. They cut my jumpsuit and shoe off me. I loved that shoe.

we have the technology

we can rebuild him

As expected, I took a ride to the hospital and spent the rest of the day with some fine doctors and spunky nurses. The rest, they say, is history. Eight months, three surgeries, two procedures, one rod, a plate, a dozen screws, and weeks of physical therapy later, I’m back in the air again like nothing happened. The thing is, though, something had happened, and I think of it often. How would it have turned out had I tried to land the main with back risers? What if I had set the reserve down on one of my other possible landing targets? Going back even earlier, how could I have prevented the toggle lock? In hindsight, what could I have done differently?

-Billy Hayes

I’m a pretty self-taught kind of guy and have been told I have a good head on my shoulders and approach things the right way. So I was confident, knew my EP’s, practiced, did all the appropriate training but was still underqualified (probably around 150 jumps at the time and no FFC or wingsuit coach at my local DZ). I got up in the plane and had a phenomenal exit, and really picked up the flying aspect pretty quickly.

This was in a Birdman GTi which is considered more or less a good suit to start in, not necessarily a “beginner” suit however. Regardless, I was having fun flying lines and carving and getting the feel of things and because of my slow fall rate decided it was OK to smoke it down to my regular pull altitude. By the time I decided to pull I was passing through 3k. I reached back and pulled but my non-tackified gloves slipped off my hackey handle! I went back to grab for my PC but found nothing was there, I must have half pulled it out and I had the impression that it sitting in my burble not inflated. Thoughts of pulling silver flashed through my mind as I went back one last time. I found some bit of fabric still in my BOC and chucked it with a rather hefty flick of the wrist. I looked over my shoulder and saw an inflated PC begin the deployment process.

I found myself in the saddle around 1800ft with 3 line twists. My conservative loading (1.0/1) on a quick opening Triathlon 160 gave me the leeway to get away with this- the canopy wasn’t diving or turning as I pulled myself out of my linetwists and unzipped my suit.

Lessons learned?

1) Formal training would have drilled me to open higher than normal.
2) Complacency kills! Because things were going great I decided to smoke it lower- this could have been fatal!
3) Changing too many variables at a time (new suit, new gloves) is not a good choice.

Hopefully some of the newer birds can learn something from this. I am all the more humbled and wiser because of the experience and as a result, always am more aware during the opening process- giving more effort into my pulls than I did before.

Thanks!
-AG

–
Andrew Garcia
http://www.whoisandrewgarcia.com
http://www.inseparablenomads.com

Do you have a similar story to Andrew’s? What would you tell someone who just got down from doing something like this? Add your two cents in the comments below.