A Miraculous Sky Rescue

The jump began as a routine skydiving exercise, part of a convention of 420 parachutists sponsored by Skydive Arizona, but it quickly turned into a test of nerve, instinct and courage, carried out within seconds. Moments after he went out the open hatch of a four-engine DC-4 airplane at 9,000 ft. near Coolidge, Ariz., Sky Diver Gregory Robertson, 35, could see that Debbie Williams, 31, a fellow parachutist with a modest 50 jumps to her credit, was in big trouble. Instead of "floating" in the proper stretched-out position parallel to the earth, Williams was tumbling like a rag doll. In attempting to join three other divers in a handholding ring formation, she had slammed into the backpack of another chutist, and was knocked unconscious.

From his instructor's position 40 ft. above the other divers, Robertson reacted with instincts that had been honed by 1,700 jumps during time away from his job as an AT&T engineer in Phoenix. He straightened into a vertical dart, arms pinned to his body, ankles crossed, head aimed at the ground in what chutists call a "no-lift" dive, and plummeted toward Williams at a speed of around 200 m.p.h. The effort was like "trying to catch a football that was flopping down the road at 40 m.p.h.," said Bill Rothe, Williams' fiance, who watched from the ground. At 3,500 ft., about ten seconds before impact, Robertson caught up with Williams, almost hitting her but slowing his own descent by assuming the open-body froglike position. He angled the unconscious sky diver so her chute could open readily and, at 2,000 ft., with some six seconds left, yanked the rip cord on her emergency chute, then pulled his own rip cord. The two sky divers floated to the ground. Williams, a fifth- grade teacher from Post, Texas, landed on her back, suffering a skull fracture, nine broken ribs and a perforated kidney -- but alive. In the history of recreational skydiving, there has never been such a daring rescue in anyone's recollection. Several attempts have ended with both chutists crashing into the ground.