Referring to the moment when her instructor is forcing her out the door despite what appear to be her having second thoughts, the Oakdale, Calif., woman said that's not really what happened. She said her bad knee gave out as she was at the door.
"He had to give me a little nudge," Everett, now 81, said. "He knew how bad I wanted to jump."
She said it's a blessing that her shirt blew up over her head, because it blocked her view of her precarious descent.
"I had just one little peephole of light shining through. I didn't get to see anything," she said.
Everett jumped with The Parachute Center, a skydiving company in Acampo, Calif.
Skydiving fatalities are on the decline these days, with some 21 deaths out of 3 million jumpers in 2010, a 0.007 chance of death, according to the Units States Parachute Association.
Nancy Koreen, a spokeswoman for the association, said they were aware of the incident before the video was posted. It looked as if Laverne's harness wasn't adjusted properly, and that she wasn't positioned properly before the jump, she said.
"But that's not at all a common occurrence," she said. "It's extremely, extremely rare."
