Pilot Tries To Get Life, Troubled Kids Back On Course
Joe McCarron’s list of personal tragedies is worthy of a biblical character. So it’s fortunate he can find peace in a plane.
“I’m a recovering human,” he says with a weak smile. “I need time for Joe McCarron - and that’s often in the air.”
Every few years, Joe’s tumultuous life settles long enough for his brain to fire off a great idea. Six years ago, it was Idaho Drug Free Youth. Kids voluntarily took drug tests and then were rewarded with store discounts and freebies for clean results. The program swept the state.
Now, it’s SOARING, a plan to mix reforming teenage troublemakers with commercial and stunt pilots. He wants to reward kids who are trying to turn their lives around.
For Joe, SOARING is the perfect mix of professional aspirations and personal need.
He was born 49 years ago wanting to fly. He made his solo flight the day after he turned 18 and trained as a military officer in college so he could enter the military as a pilot.
“I was No. 33 on the draft,” he says. “I figured I was going (to Vietnam), and I’d rather be over there at 35,000 feet.”
But Joe was blown off course. He says a young drunken driver killed his father and, consequently, he flunked most of his finals that year. When he finally finished school, the U.S. Air Force needed navigators more than pilots.
Joe settled for navigation, then decided he’d give it everything he had. He didn’t let personal catastrophes get in the way.
Just before his test transoceanic flight from California to Hawaii, he saw on the television news that his sister had killed his brother-in-law in self-defense. Joe says his brother-in-law had tried to kill her and her son. Joe wasn’t aware of his sister’s problems and didn’t know what to do. So he flew on schedule.
Six months later, Joe visited his sister and she died in his arms from asthma. He kept flying.
“I thought I could just keep going,” he says. “I buried my feelings, didn’t sleep well.’ He didn’t talk much, but he listened well. His buddies poured out their hearts to him. So Joe decided to become a therapist.
He moved to Coeur d’Alene to counsel teens with substance abuse problems and launched his popular IDFY program before life blew up in his face again in 1992.
That year, he was diagnosed with skin cancer just before his wife of 17 years was arrested for embezzling thousands of dollars from her employer. That year his mother died. So did his dog of 15 years. After his wife was convicted, she divorced Joe. Everything they owned went toward her debt. He quit flying that year.
“That’s when I finally learned how to talk about myself, how to reach out,” Joe says. “I’d been through hell and it was great to tell someone.”
One of the therapy groups he joined in the next few years helped him remember his love of flying. He updated his pilot’s license last fall and, on a whim, took one of his young clients to Coeur d’Alene’s airport. Joe was looking for anything that might interest the 14-year-old.
The airport dazzled the boy, so Joe decided it might work as an incentive to keep reforming teen troublemakers on the right track. Pilots offered flights and ground school training. Juvenile probation officers offered to give Joe’s SOARING program a try this month. Joe wants to link kids with people in other professions, too.
Joe finds himself at the airport every week now, organizing SOARING. There’s no place he’s happier.
“What’s the one thing I want to do besides help people?” he says. “I want to fly.”
To volunteer for SOARING, call Joe at 765-4512.
Time travel
Rathdrum’s Joe Brown leaves for New Zealand today to play exhibition games with the Idaho All-Star Football Team.
Because of time zone changes, he’ll jump from July 3rd to July 5th. Is it constitutional to rob an American of Independence Day?
What Fourth of July blast is burned in your memory?
Pop off the details to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.
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