Brave student completes 10,000ft skydive for international missing person charity

A brave student has successfully completed a 10,00ft skydive for an international missing person investigation charity, helping her reach her fundraising target of £500.

Recently graduated Social Sciences student Brodie Haldane decided to do the skydive to help raise funds for Locate International, a charity which helps families find loved ones involved in unsolved missing person cases.

Brodie became aware of the charity when she started volunteering with GCU’s Cold Case Unit, which she joined when the unit first launched.

Brodie, who set the fundraising target at £500, has how reached £670. Despite the skydive being over, she’s not willing to give up just yet.

The day of your sky dive arrives – how did you feel in the morning of it?

“I didn't feel nervous the morning of the skydive, purely because the weather was so bad that we thought it would get cancelled. We arrived at 8am and were told to wait until 11am for a weather update as it was basically thunder and lightning when we arrived!

After many people rescheduled their bookings and headed home, we waited until around 2pm - the weather finally cleared, and we could jump at 6pm. It was a long day and a lot of waiting around; it almost felt like we were going 'go-karting' with the jumpsuits we had to wear.

All the instructors were very relaxed about the jump! It wasn't until we started getting all the kit on that I began to feel a little nervous, but I was more excited, to be honest.”

How was the experience overall?

“Once all your kit was on and they explained all the instructions again, we headed up into the wee tiny plane. Me and my partner and our two instructors are all quite big people – my partner is 6 foot 4 in height, and I'm around 5 foot 8, so we are pretty tall. Once we all got crammed into the plane (with the videographer too), it took about 25 minutes to get up to the altitude around 10,000 ft. Everything looked so tiny, it made me more nervous the higher up we got - the fact it took 25 minutes to get up made me realise just how high we were jumping from!”

My partner jumped out first, so watching him go out and disappear was terrifying. I felt reasonably okay before that in terms of nerves, but after watching him, my whole body went to jelly and I felt like I couldn't move. To make things worse, my instructor's leg got caught on the pilot’s seat, so we had to shuffle about the wee plane, and it was shaking a bit from trying to get his leg un-trapped. The videographer had to help us!

Once we finally got up to the edge, it all went super-fast; suddenly, I was free-falling. Initially it feels as if you are spinning out of control, but once you throw your arms out to the sides (as you see in the picture), you stabilise and the fall feels unbelievable; it felt so fast. It was super cool as I could hold hands with the videographer as we were free-falling, so that was pretty awesome – that part felt like slow motion!”

Once the parachute went out, I couldn't stop looking down; I was totally fixated on the ground and then my instructor shouted for me to look up - the view was amazing! You could see the whole of St Andrews and the sea. The instructor handed over the parachute handles and I was able to have control for a while, flying about the sky, which was so cool – I felt like the female James Bond gliding my way around with this massive parachute.

Once I completed the jump, I felt so giddy and excited. Even though the jump was all over within five to ten minutes, it was the best experience. I can't believe I actually did it.”

For those who are passionate about raising money for an important cause, why would you recommend doing a fundraiser?

If you have something that you are passionate about and get an opportunity to raise some money, go for it! I was worried that, because the work that Locate International does is pretty unique and that it’s a relatively new registered charity, people wouldn't be willing to donate. I was worried that they may not understand my cause or heard of the charity as it not one of the big main ones you hear about (e.g. Children's Hospice, Breast Cancer UK, etc).

However, I was so surprised how many people were not only so unbelievably generous with their donations, but were also so keen to know more about the work that Locate does and discuss the cause.

I think, obviously, the central part of a fundraiser is to raise money for an important cause, but it's also about spreading the word about your cause. Even if someone can't donate, they could still be affected and find additional help or support through the charity you are raising money for. You just never know who might see it.”

Now that the skydive is complete, is there anyone that you’d like to thank?:

I want to thank Dr Maureen Taylor for bringing the idea of fundraising for Locate International to my attention. Maureen inspired me to do this fundraiser and has always been the biggest motivator and supporter within our team at Locate!

I also want to thank every single person that donated, shared, liked and talked to me about my fundraiser for Locate – we managed to reach far past our target goal, so this was so special for such a fantastic cause.”

You can donate to Brodie’s fundraiser here