One common bond united first-time skydivers Heather, Kevin and Ransom. They were ... : In for a Fall

The story idea was this: A reporter would go to Lake Elsinore and bear witness to the way various people react to their first skydive. How would each rookie skydiver deal with his or her fear as the day progressed? Would they succumb to their fear--or defeat it?

There was just one problem with this otherwise fine idea: No one who showed up at the Jim Wallace Skydiving School that day was scared. In fact, quite the opposite. Three people from three very different walks of life gladly--heck, almost reverentially--made the leap of faith of a lifetime. There were no white knuckles, prayers offered or last-minute regrets.

Before jumping, no one even bothered to ask “is this any way to run an airline?”

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One hour before she’s due to jump, Heather Ott is already ecstatic. And why not? It is a beautiful, sunny day at Elsinore. It also happens to be Ott’s 18th birthday. Skydiving--the fulfillment of a longtime dream for Ott--is a gift from her mother.

“Heather has always had an interest in death-defying things,” says mom, Donna Delpercio.

Kevin O’Sullivan is a friend of Donna’s and Heather’s. O’Sullivan, 32, lives in Escondido and earns his wages as a manufacturing supervisor of electronics. Why is he jumping?

O’Sullivan says he has been scuba diving and bungee jumping--and that he wanted to add skydiving to the list. One hour before jumping, O’Sullivan sums up his state of mind: “I am,” he says, “totally, totally excited.”

Fifty-five minutes later, excited does not accurately describe the look on O’Sullivan’s face. As he crab walks to the open door of the airplane, tied to his instructor, O’Sullivan wears the beatific expression of a frat boy damned to spend eternity as a beer taster.

If you saw Ransom Wilson walking down the street, the first phrase to come to mind would not be “adrenaline junkie.” He is stout and wears a beard and has the look of someone who does something serious for a living.

Which he does. Wilson, 46, is a professor of flute at Yale University. He has played and recorded with orchestras all over the planet--Florence is his next stop after conducting a seminar in Idyllwild. On the advice of a friend, Wilson has decided that skydiving might supply an adequate diversion to a morning on the road.

To Wilson, jumping from a plane is kind of like a flute solo. Once you commit to walking on stage, there is no going back. You have time to take a breath and then dive in. You don’t always do it because you want to, you do it because, well, you have to.

“Doing this is going into the breach,” says Wilson. “It’s completely against nature to lean over and leave a moving aircraft. You ask yourself ‘can I do something this outrageous?’ ”

Wilson shrugs. Then he adds something--something very interesting: “They say it’s hard to teach adults to ski because leaning forward is against their nature. But kids, they have no problem with it.”

So, maybe it has something to do with recapturing youth. After all, what’s there to fear about being young again? Or believing you can fly? Jim Wallace, owner of the skydiving school, is a living testimony that jumping keeps one young. Wallace is 51, but looks 35. Then again, the view from his office is probably better than the view from yours: In the last 28 years, Wallace has made almost 15,000 jumps, the third most of any parachutist in the United States.

Wallace has done considerable stunt work for the movies--his credits include “Terminal Velocity,” “Air Force One” and “Point Break.” Once, for fun, he and a buddy jumped out of two different biplanes at 18,000 feet. Both men then proceeded to skydive 9,000 feet before somehow managing to climb back into the biplanes, without mangling themselves on the propellers.

“I don’t care what anyone says,” says Wallace, nodding toward the drop zone, “skydiving is still the edge.”

Is this the reason people jump out of airplanes?

“There’s a variety of reasons,” says Wallace. “Fear of heights--although it doesn’t help. Sense of accomplishment, adrenaline junkies out for a fix, some do it on a dare, maybe it’s on their all-time list of things to do. We get a lot of older people who have lost their spouses. It is something they always wanted to do, but their spouse wouldn’t let them.”

In the last decade, new and better equipment has made it possible to do tandem free falls--the student and instructor are attached, allowing them to fall 8,000 feet before opening the parachute. Previously, first-time skydivers could only make a static line jump. The static line opens the parachute just seconds after the jumper leaves the plane.

Allowing rookies to free fall--to be James Bond for 50 seconds--helped keep skydiving competitive with other “extreme” sports that have developed in recent years. Think mountain biking is fun? Try doing it down a ski slope. Like to run? The race from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney will melt your shoes. Think mountaineering is a hoot? Join the crowds of other inexperienced, hypothermic climbers on Denali or Everest.

Skydiving and these other extreme sports are, of course, escapes. Escape from what? Non-stop comfort. Information overload. Pressure. Whatever the reason, the advent of these extreme sports suggests that some people need these escapes so badly that fear becomes a nonissue.

It was certainly a nonissue for our conquering trio on this day. Several days after jumping, Ransom Wilson reflected on his jump in an e-mail he wrote during a layover on his trip to Florence:

“Oddly enough, although I was Mr. Cool during the actual jump, my exhilaration and excitement over the experience are far more keen in retrospect. I do find myself thinking about it constantly, and am longing to do it again. Life altering? Well, yes, in a certain way . . . for me it alters my perceptions of my world and its boundaries--as well as of who I am and what I am and not capable of.”

Jim Wallace Skydiving School is located at Lake Elsinore’s Skylark Airport. There are three options for first-time jumpers: Tandem freefall, static line and accelerated freefall. Prices range between $159 and $299; group discounts are available. For more information, phone the school at (800) 795-3483.