Skydiving Santa Surprises Students With a Holiday Landing

Forget Prancer, Donner and Dasher. Santa Claus arrived at La Seda Elementary School on Thursday via parachute. From 9,000 feet up.

Seven hundred schoolchildren squinted in the sun and shrieked as Santa and five other skydivers with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department skydiving team leaped out of a plane and floated to the schoolyard. It was the latest in what has become an annual tradition of offbeat Santa Claus visits to this school, located in an unincorporated area near La Puente.

“This is the best,” said Richard Carranza, 9, moments after Santa touched down.

Teachers called a fire drill about 1 p.m. and led the children outside, lining them up behind orange cones in the school’s yard. The flares burning nearby and giant tarp spread out a dozen yards away gave the children a hint that something was up.

But they couldn’t quite figure it out. “Is that a bomb?” asked first-grader Albert Baez, 6, pointing to a flare.

Soon, a plane was buzzing overhead. The principal told the children to look for skydivers. And minutes later, the six parachutists sailed toward earth.

“They’re going to cover us up!” shrieked Geraldine Medrano, 6, as the skydivers and their billowing parachutes hovered over the crowd. “Yay!”

Then the children spotted the trademark red suit and white beard.

“He can’t be Santa,” said Gemma Alcala, 7. “If he was really Santa he’d have his reindeer.”

Good guess. Santa was really Jerry Borquin, 63, a former U.S. Army parachutist who is on the Golden Eagles, the sheriff’s skydiving squad. But the resemblance was striking, and his landing was flawless.

“Where’s your sled?” kids shouted.

“I came on my airplane so I could parachute in,” Borquin quickly replied.

Borquin is the fourth Santa to visit La Seda. When Principal Audrey Hicks took over five years ago, she decided to surprise her students by bringing Santa on a firetruck at a December fire drill. The next year Santa traveled by limousine, then on a horse.

And now skydiving. “How do you top that?” Hicks was asked.

“You’ll have to come next year to find out,” she said.