He Has a Way of Bouncing Back

If you have a strong heart, it’s kind of fun watching Paul D. McKinnon do his thing.

Lately, he’s been been jumping off bridges, such as the 200-foot-high Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro.

In fact, he has leaped off 14 bridges and plans more adventurous jumps in England, which he will visit starting Saturday as a delegate to the World Congress of Chiropractic Students.

He is part of the latest craze of Bungee jumping--leaping off something and, hopefully, being pulled up just short of the ground by an elastic-type tether attached to the feet.

“I’d like to a make a 600-foot fall,” he said. “I see that as a big-time jump.”

And get this. McKinnon says it’s his way of overcoming fear.

“I sort of was afraid of height,” said the La Habra chiropractic student who also operates a local house-sitting business. “It’s a wonderful, challenging thing to do.”

McKinnon believes that if people jumped off bridges, they would lessen their fears, helping them to be more successful.

“Now I know I can do anything I want to do,” he said. “If you break one fear, you can break all the others. Your fear turns into exhilaration when the air rushes by you.”

At the end of the jump, he said, “you just feel a gentle tug. It’s almost like flying without an airplane.”

His support group pulls him up.

Although he’s big on bridge jumping, McKinnon also likes roller-blading, a new type of roller-skating using skates with four wheels lined up behind each other rather than two wheels side by side.

“Hockey players and speed skaters use them for conditioning during the off-season,” said McKinnon, who recently completed a 102.7-mile, roller-blading trip to San Diego in 8 hours and 50 minutes.

He started at the Huntington Beach Pier and finished at the entrance to Sea World in San Diego.

He asked chiropractors to donate 25 cents a mile for each mile he roller-bladed to finance the $1,500 needed for his England trip.

“I started out asking only chiropractors to help me so I could develop a rapport with them since that’s going to be my life’s work,” said the one-time amateur hockey player who had thoughts of becoming a professional.

But McKinnon was forced to seek donations from other professionals to meet his goal.

His decision to be a chiropractor was prompted by a sports injury.

“I suffered a back injury and was told I wouldn’t be able to play hockey any more,” he said. “Besides, I’m only 5 foot, 8 inches tall and that’s too small for the pros.”

He was facing back surgery until he received treatment from a chiropractor who, he said, not only helped him physically but helped him decide his life’s work.

McKinnon said he was once a premed student with a full scholarship,

“But I decided that being a chiropractor was the best thing I could do to help a lot more people,” he said. “I like the hands-on approach without doing surgery.”

McKinnon said he has a number of visions and goals, including a mission to promote good health through diet, exercise and education.

One of his goals is to become the team chiropractic doctor for the Los Angeles Kings.

“A lot of hockey players use chiropractors to help keep them fit,” he noted.