Jumping for the record - Cheryl Stearns, Army reserve skydiver

Army Reserve Magazine, Summer, 2001 by Steven J. Alvarez

A parachute blossomed safely over Cheryl Stearns head the 73 previous times she hurled her body earthward from an aircraft. Her 74th jump began the same way -- she stepped off a mechanically sound airplane and was embraced by the crisp, arid vastness of the Arizona sky that she often fell through at 120 mph. The similarities ended there.

"A streamer"

After several seconds, Stearns, an Army reservist assigned to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and attached to the U.S. Army Parachute Team at Ft. Bragg, N.C., pulled her ripcord, but instead of feeling the violent jolt of the parachute harnessing air and slowing her fall to a float, she looked up and saw "a streamer," a parachutist's term that to laymen means trouble.

"I pulled at 2,500 feet--stuff came out, but it wouldn't open," Stearns said. In her brain began the methodical and often machine-like thought process of dealing with catastrophic equipment failure during a freefall. "My mind wasn't trained to say, 'hey, you're in freefall and you're smoking it down here," she said.

Stearns calmly thought through her checklists as the parachute flailed above her head with the earth drawing closer. She "cut away" her failed chute and aimed her back toward the ground, a position that allows for the easy deployment of the reserve chute.

"I pulled my reserve and FOOM, it opened up," Stearns said, imitating the parachute's deployment by holding her hands close together and then mushrooming them out beyond shoulder-width. "I turned around and landed on the ground. I had about a seven-second canopy. I was about 200 to 300 feet above the ground when the chute opened," she said. "When I got on the ground I absolutely lost it. People thought I bounced. I just stood there and said, 'you almost killed yourself, you almost killed yourself!' If I had waited one more second to pull, I would have impacted," she said.

A champion

Stearns didn't impact, but she would impact the world of skydiving forever after surviving her close call. She is undoubtedly one of the most well known Army Reservists and she is the most decorated skydiver in the world. She's the current and 21-time US women's skydiving champion. She has 30 world records and at one time held four different world records, a feat no other parachutist has ever accomplished. She has a dizzying 14,000 jumps to her credit.

In 1995, Steams jumped into the Guinness World Record books and marked her page in history by logging the most parachute jumps for a woman in 24 hours.

In 2002, she will go for yet another record. She hopes to be in a 365-foot polyester balloon on the edge of space 24 miles up and looking down on earth.

The jump will take Stearns higher than any other person has jumped. The previous record was set in 1960 and stands at 102,800 feet.

"The biggest thing that I'm looking forward to is sitting in that open gondola, with the doors open and watching the earth go away," Stearns said with anticipation in her voice. Although the jump is more than one year away, she acts as if she is jumping in a few minutes. "Can you see yourself 24 miles high and riding up?"

Stearns will break the sound barrier in her record-setting jump as she plummets toward the earth at more than 800 mph. She will don a pressurized suit similar to what astronauts wear on space walks that will protect her from temperatures that can reach minus 90 degrees. She will have life support systems and a helmet with a heads-up-display showing altitude, global positioning system readings and her orientation to the earth.

However, before Stearns can jump from 130,000 feet, she has to get there. A balloon constructed of a tough polyester film called Mylar will deliver her to the edge of space. The balloon is designed to withstand the high-radiation and sub-zero temperatures of the upper atmosphere and Stearns will pilot it.

Airline pilot

Although Sgt. 1st Class Stearns is a 92A, a supply/logistics noncommissioned officer with the Army Reserve, she is a command pilot for US Airways and she has logged nearly 15,000 hours in the cockpit. She has been piloting aircraft for 28 years.

"If I had my choice, I would much rather fly aerobatics than from point A to point B. I want to fly an airplane. I want to fly a parachute and know what the limits are to that thing," Stearns said. "I want to do the turns and loops, right side up, upside down and turn that airplane inside and out. That's real flying to me," she said passionately, but still keeping her calm demeanor as she twisted and turned her hands to imitate an airplane.

"It took me 13 years to get the top position as a pilot," Stearns said. She is a captain and one of the most senior pilots flying for the airline in the mid-Atlantic region. "It's like making general finally," she said. Stearns said that some view her job as a "glorified bus driver," but Stearns disagrees. "I see it as someone who's taking an $85 million airplane and 120 people safely to where they need to go with the knowledge that I have," she said. Stearns' 28-year love affair with flight began in Arizona when she was 17. She begged her mother for the money to jump from an airplane, but what should have been one jump turned to several, and several turned to hundreds and then thousands.