Fallen Paraglider’s Spirits Soar

Thanks to a host of earthly angels, fallen paraglider Jeff Ames is out of Mexico and on the mend at Spokane’s St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute.

That’s good news for everyone except the Grinches who took a dark view of my Feb. 26 plea on behalf of the uninsured Valley, Wash., adventurer.

After miraculously surviving a 1,500-foot fall during international competition, Jeff found himself trapped in a Mexico City hospital bed. Broke and broken, he had slim hope of getting to America for the high-tech surgery he needed to walk again.

Fortunately, plenty of good Samaritans reached out to help the 26-year-old farm kid turned adventurer.

“I feel like I’ve had a second chance,” says Jeff from his room at St. Luke’s. “It’s more than just good fortune. It’s as if God had a hand in this.”

There is something distinctly divine about the whirlwind he has been riding.

Through an Internet search, Jeff’s father, Perry, found a Canadian air ambulance willing to fly his son to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center. The fee was $14,000, which Perry put on a credit card.

Mexican hospital officials were at first unwilling to release the young man without paying his $40,000 bill. Perry could only cover $5,000. Jeff was let go on a signed promise for the rest.

On March 5 in Seattle, Jeff underwent nearly 10 hours of delicate surgery to repair the severe damage to his pelvis. The operation went well. Jeff believes he will return to his pre-crash condition.

Meanwhile, donations are rolling in.

Thursday afternoon, on the one-month anniversary of his fall, Jeff was moved to St. Luke’s. Generous administrators said they would pick up the tab for what could be a lengthy stay. “He certainly has caught people’s attention,” says Robert Kellerman, public relations director for the St. Luke’s institute.

Not all the attention was good.

More than a few steamed readers gave me an earful. “Call me cold and callous, but I have little sympathy for Jeff Ames,” wrote one letter writer. “… He is also a very stupid man to engage in such a dangerous lifestyle with no health or accident insurance.”

Another writer snarled, “I’m sorry Ames had an accident, but I have other priorities for my charitable contributions.”

Told of the controversy he unknowingly caused, Ames rubbed his beard with pale fingers. “I kind of have to agree with them,” he says. “I’m stupid, man. I looked at insurance, but it was so expensive.”

Should he ever glide again, Jeff vows to be fully insured.

This is hardly the first case of a young athlete pursuing a dangerous sport without an insurance safety net. Paragliders soar with the wind, hanging from light fabric canopies whose shapes are maintained solely by air pressure.

Had Jeff been an uninsured skier training for the Olympics, people might have been more sympathetic. But paragliding is a little understood sport in the United States.

There are perhaps only 75 to 100 serious competitors here. In Austria, for example, 40,000 residents are licensed pilots. “The more you fly, the more skills you develop,” Jeff says.

Sometimes skills aren’t enough. An unexpected crosswind tangled Jeff’s lines in the skies over the Valley of the Brave. Unable to correct the problem, he spiraled downward, his altimeter growling an alert with each descending meter.

The impact in a concrete courtyard shattered his pelvis, injured his right leg and collapsed a lung. The bumpy, two-hour trip to Mexico City all but killed him.

“Just laying here like this gives you a feel for what it would be to spend your whole life this way,” says Jeff, a handsome man with fine features and hazel eyes.

“I never had a grim outlook on humanity. But everything people have done for me, people who didn’t even know me, it really renews you.

“I’m overwhelmed and thankful.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: Donations for Jeff Ames can be made at any Seafirst Bank.