Sky Diver, 88, Says Age Is Just a Number : Thrill-seeker: Her activities include body-surfing and ice-fishing. And she enjoys a good steak dinner--with a gin and tonic.

When Hazel Stout looked out the open door of an airplane 10,500 feet up, her life didn’t pass before her eyes. It would have taken too long.

Stout, 88, jumped--and landed amid a media feeding frenzy. Newspapers, television stations and radio reporters, “The Late Night with David Letterman Show” and “The Home Show” all wanted to know her secret for staying young.

“I don’t see how people can stay so interested in such a simple thing,” Stout said in an interview at her Portland apartment, two days after returning from New York and the Letterman show.

“I drew less attention all my life than anyone in the world, I think. And then, all of the sudden, it just went like wildfire.”

What philosophy allowed Stout to jump out of a plane after walking on solid ground for nearly 90 years?

“Life begins at 80,” she said.

“A lot of people go by the number. They see this number, 88, and they say, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t do that. I’m too old.’ ”

Stout doesn’t go by the numbers.

She enjoys a cocktail before dinner--gin and tonic in summer or Scotch and soda in the rainy Oregon winter. She likes a good steak, which she chews with her own natural teeth. She doesn’t smoke.

If you’re going to be a thrill-seeker, it helps to have bones that heal fast. She broke an ankle while body-surfing in Hawaii.

“The beach was marked, ‘Not for Swimmers,’ ” she said. “Well, a big breaker came in and I had trouble getting to the surface. I cracked my ankle when I tried to scramble out of the water and up a really steep slope.”

Of course, she was only 78 then. She really put her body to the test at 84.

A car struck her as she tried to cross the street in front of her apartment.

“I was thrown 15 feet in the air, they tell me,” she said. “I woke up in the hospital. I had a broken arm, a broken pelvis and a slight concussion.

“The doctor said I’d never be able to put my hands above my head, but I recovered rapidly,” she said, clasping both hands high over her white hair.

She has gone ice-fishing, ridden a snowmobile, flown in a glider and swooshed down a mountain on an alpine slide. She has caught fish and frogs and wants to go white-water rafting.

But her most thrilling adventure to date has to be sky-diving.

The idea came from her granddaughter, Shelly Tarrel, whose husband, Rick, is a skilled sky diver who does tandem jumps.

Before Stout and Tarrel strapped themselves together and jumped from the airplane on Aug. 3, Hazel’s birthday, the oldest woman sky diver was 80, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

“It was fun,” she said. “It was kind of scary when that door opens and you’re up 10,500 feet and look down and see that space and know that you’re going to go out in it.

“But once you’re out, you free-fall for 40 seconds and it’s like floating on a cloud. That was fun. After 5,000 feet, the parachute opens and you come down in about four minutes.”

Stout said her life was quiet and sedate until her husband, Waldo, died 14 years ago.

“We had a real nice life,” she said, “but he liked other things. He liked art, music and museums.

“If my husband was still alive, he’d think I was crazy. He’d have had me committed If I said I wanted to jump out of a plane.”