Jordan Hatmaker knew something was wrong as soon as she tried to open her parachute. “You’re meant to look up to check: is it there? Is it square? And is it stable?” she says.
It was none of those things.
This was the second time that day that she and her skydiving coach had leapt from an aircraft 13,500ft above the fields and farmland of Suffolk, Virginia. Hatmaker was 35, and 10 jumps away from securing her skydiving licence.
“When you’re spinning around while being pulled to the ground, it’s hard to know exactly what’s happening. I was in my own world. All I was thinking about was how to get out of the situation. I felt oddly calm.
“I do remember seeing the ground coming towards me really quickly and I thought to myself: ‘This is going to hurt.’”
Hatmaker has always been a thrill-seeker. “I’ve always loved rollercoasters, zip-lining, jumping off cliffs into water, climbing mountains – all that stuff,” she says. Remarkably, she had never so much as broken a bone before that day in November 2021. “I never worried about safety; I always figured everything would be fine.”
After graduating from college, she began working for a defence contractor, selling equipment to the military. She first tried skydiving with a tandem jump in 2015 and immediately fell in love with the sport. “It’s been my dream to fly since I was a little kid – if somebody asked me what animal I would like to be, I would always say a bird. Being able to tackle something so daring gave me a great sense of confidence and pride.”
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