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The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called "A Father's Love" and it's about how one father stopped at nothing to protect his child. The second story you'll hear is called "Transplant" and it's one of the most heartwarming and heartbreaking stories we've ever covered. And the third and final story you'll hear is called "The Maneuver" and it's about an unthinkable decision that a skydiving instructor had to make during one of his jumps with a student.

But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Amazon Music Follow Buttons house and swap out their cat for an identical looking other cat. Okay, let's get into our first story called A Father's Love.

Imagine a burglary at your own home. Now, if you're picturing some shady character sneaking about under the cloak of night, you may be surprised to learn that, according to the FBI, most break-ins happen during broad daylight, and they spike right now, in the summer, when people go on vacation and leave their homes empty and unprotected. And so that's why you need SimpliSafe home security right now. With SimpliSafe, I don't worry about leaving my home for any reason.

Because I know that if something happens, my SimpliSafe security system will alert me and the police. With FastProtect monitoring and LiveGuard protection, SimpliSafe agents can act within five seconds of receiving your alarm. They can even see and speak to intruders to stop them in their tracks. SimpliSafe has been named Best Home Security Systems by U.S. News & World Report for five years running, and they offer the very best customer service in home security, according to Newsweek.

It's easy to install and activate your new SimpliSafe system in less than an hour. Or you can just choose professional installation to have a pro do it for you. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for fast protect monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash ballin. That's simplisafe.com slash ballin. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

Shopify has already taken the cash register online, helping millions sell billions around the world. But did you know they can do the same thing at your retail store? Give your point of sale system a serious upgrade with Shopify.

With Shopify, you get a powerhouse selling partner that effortlessly unites your in-person and online sales into one source of truth. That way, you can track every sale across your business in one place, and you know exactly what's in stock. Shopify also helps you drive store traffic with plug-and-play tools built for marketing campaigns on TikTok, Instagram, and beyond.

And you get the hardware that fits your business. Take payments with your smartphone, transform your tablet into a point-of-sale system, or use Shopify's POS Go mobile device for a battle-tested solution. Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way.

Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash mrballin, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash mrballin to take your retail business to the next level today. shopify.com slash mrballin. In January of 2015, a 27-year-old Texas man named George Pickering III suffered a massive stroke.

He was immediately admitted to a hospital where he was put on life support and then doctors delivered some bad news to his family. It would turn out George was brain dead and they advised the family that realistically they should consider pulling George off of life support because it wasn't going to do him any good. George's family was totally devastated by this news. In fact, George's father was so upset he just left the hospital altogether.

And so in his father's absence, George's mother and brother wound up talking to doctors and saying that, "Yes, we are prepared to pull George off of life support." After they consented to have this done, they put George on an organ donor list and then began making funeral plans.

When George's father came back to the hospital later that day and found out his family had consented to have George pulled from life support, he was furious. He did not believe his son was just totally brain dead and there was no hope. He felt like they should at least try to give him a little bit more time to potentially give them a signal that he was okay. But George's mother and brother told George's father that they had spoken to the doctors and there was just no hope. There was no reason to delay this process. It was time.

But George's father was totally not having it. He stormed out of the room and he found the doctors and he demanded they keep his son on life support just a little bit longer. But the doctors told him there really is no reason to do that. And in fact, all you're doing is jeopardizing the people that need his organs that are waiting for this organ transplant. And so really what we need to do is actually expedite taking him off of life support because that's the best thing to do right now.

George's father was so upset, totally distraught, he ran back to his son's room. He laid over his son and he just held his hands and stared at him and just prayed that his son would give him some sign that he was actually not brain dead. But his son didn't. And before long, the doctors began filtering into the room to begin the procedure of removing his son from life support. And when they came in the room, George's father kind of snapped.

He ran out of the room, he ran out of the hospital, he went out to his car and he got his gun and then ran back into the hospital, back into his son's room and aimed the gun at the doctors and ordered them to stop what they were doing and leave the room immediately.

And so the doctors had not actually begun removing George from life support, so he's still on life support. And so once the doctors and everyone left the room, George's father walked over, he locked the door, and then for the next several hours, he just kept his gun aimed at the door as he laid over his son and just kept looking down in hopes that his son would give him some sign that he was not brain dead.

And so finally, when the SWAT team arrived and was stacking up outside the door in the hallway, they began yelling into the room for George's father to put the gun down and let them come in. And George's father the whole time is just looking down at his son, hoping and praying that his son is just going to do something.

And right as the SWAT team kicks in the door and comes into the room, George's father had reached down and grabbed his son's hand and his son squeezed his hand back. And as soon as his father felt that, he dropped the gun and he surrendered peacefully to the SWAT team. And then the SWAT team put George's father on the ground. And as he's being detained, George's father is yelling for the doctors to come in the room. My son is okay.

And sure enough, when the doctors came in the room, George was okay. He was moving his hand, his eyes were open, he was making good eye contact, and before long, he made a totally full recovery. He would later be told that had his father not stepped in when he did and bought him those extra few hours on life support, George would have died.

As for George's father, he was ultimately sentenced to 10 months in prison for his aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. But he and the rest of his family think what he did was certainly worth going to prison for. Mr. Ballin Collection is sponsored by BetterHelp.

When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, and more, it can be easy to let your priorities slip, even if you know doing so will make you miserable. But when you feel yourself losing control over your time and your sanity, that's when you need to remind yourself that certain priorities are non-negotiable. Things like taking care of your mental health.

That said, I always make sure to step back and spend time away from work with my family or friends. This is because my therapist always stresses how important it is to recharge whenever I can. That way I don't burn out. This is why I think therapy can be so helpful for people whose lives feel very hectic, which is basically all of us. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

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Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Maybe you'll find inspiration in the incredible true story of black female mathematicians at NASA in Hidden Figures, or the fantasy world of Throne of Glass. There's more to imagine when you listen. As an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog,

Our next story is called Transplant.

When Conrad Rowland was a little kid, he was always on the go. One time when he was at the grocery store with his mother, he leapt out of the cart and ran away from her and she found him stuck inside of a freezer. After that incident, she literally made him wear bells on his shoes when they were out in public so she didn't lose track of him.

But by the time Conrad was just four years old, he had discovered athletics. And instead of putting his energy into running away from his mom, he focused it exclusively on baseball, basketball, soccer, and tennis. And by the time he was 11 years old, he was an exceptional all-around athlete. And at the time, his school announced they were going to have this special guest speaker at an assembly, and it turned out to be the Hall of Fame baseball player Rod Carew.

And Conrad was just blown away. He just could not believe he was in the presence of an actual professional athlete, let alone a guy that had achieved the success Rod Carew had. And so after this assembly, when he got home, it was all Conrad could talk about was just how incredible Mr. Carew was and how he, Conrad, was going to be a professional athlete just like Mr. Carew.

For many kids, this would just be a phase. They'd be really invested in sports, and then their interest would go somewhere else, and they'd kind of forget about it, and it would not be their life calling anymore. But for Conrad, the impression Rod Crew left on him was so profound that he never wavered. He really did dedicate himself to becoming a professional athlete, and he would be successful. Albeit in a different sport, he became a professional football player in the NFL.

And in 2012, Conrad started nearly every game for the New York Jets at tight end. It was like his professional career was going off without a hitch. But in 2013, he injured his knee, which sidelined him for about two years. And even though he diligently rehabbed and got back to full strength, the teams were not really ready to take a flyer on him because they were worried his knee would just give out again. He continued to train extremely hard in hopes of landing another contract, but his playing career was starting to look bleak.

During the 2016 off-season, Conrad was back home in California visiting his family. One night, as his mother, Mary, was making dinner, Conrad was sitting at the table filling out his driver's license renewal form. And when he got to the section where it asked him if he wanted to be an organ donor, he stopped. And he asked his mother, you know, are you an organ donor? And she would say, yeah, I am. And so Conrad said, okay, then I will be too. And he checked the box. And Mary remembers thinking, gosh, I really hope it never comes to that.

A few months later, Conrad was working out in a local gym getting ready for the next season when he developed a sudden and severely painful headache. He tried to keep working out, but he just could not do it. So he stepped aside and he called his mom and he told her that he felt this weird click in his head and then he felt this blinding pain behind his left eye. His mother told him he needed to go to the hospital right away. And so that day, Conrad went over to the UCLA Medical Center where they quickly diagnosed him with a brain aneurysm.

A brain aneurysm is the bulging or ballooning of a blood vessel in the brain. If the aneurysm bursts, it's fatal about 50% of the time. And for the people who survive a ruptured aneurysm, most likely they will suffer from significant neurological deficits. After his diagnosis, Conrad remained positive and assured his family he was going to kick this thing's butt. But on December 12th, just four days after he was admitted, Conrad's aneurysm burst and he never regained consciousness.

Because Conrad was an organ donor, the doctors kept his body on life support and they called the recipients at the top of the donor lists. One of them was a man in his 70s who a year earlier had suffered a massive heart attack and desperately needed a new heart. When he and his wife got the call, they were shaking. They couldn't believe it. His life was about to be saved.

They already lived right near Los Angeles, so they hopped in their car and they sped to the UCLA Medical Center, and shortly thereafter, news out of the operating room was the transplant had been a success. The man Conrad's heart had just saved was none other than baseball Hall of Famer Rod Carew, Conrad's childhood hero that had pushed him to become a professional athlete. At first, the families had no idea, but eventually this incredible link was discovered and immediately the two families bonded.

Today, because Conrad's family only lives 12 miles away from Rod Carew and his family, Conrad's mother was given a standing invitation by the Carews to stop by any time she wanted to listen to her son's heart. The next and final story of today's episode is called "The Maneuver." On the morning of August 1st, 2009, 44-year-old skydiving instructor David Hartsock pulled into the parking lot of Skydive Houston in Texas and then made his way inside.

A few minutes later, and Dave, like the rest of his colleagues, was hard at work getting ready for the day before the facility opened up and the inevitable weekend rush began. Skydive Houston is actually just a private airport, and it's not really in Houston. It's located about 30 miles to the northwest of Houston in a city called Waller.

The main facility of Skydive Houston is situated right up against this huge open airfield that basically looks like a big green grass field. And the main facility itself is comprised of several large buildings, one of which is a huge hangar that contains the Super Twin Otter airplanes, which are the little aircraft that bring these skydivers up so they can jump out. Because Skydive Houston offers something called tandem jumping, it gets a lot of first time jumpers.

Tandem jumping is when a skydiving student attaches to the front of their instructor. Literally, they're buckled onto them, and then the two of them leap out of the plane together, with the student never detaching from the instructor. This method allows the student to just kind of go along for the ride and have no responsibility, while the instructor who's attached to them does everything. They make sure they're both stable in the air, they're the ones that pull the ripcord to deploy the chute,

They're the ones that land them safely on the ground. And so obviously, tandem jumping really appeals to first-time jumpers.

Dave had finished his three-year-long training course to become a certified skydiving instructor just a few months earlier. But even prior to going through this course, Dave was already a very experienced skydiver with over 800 jumps to his credit. And the reason he had so many jumps is because Dave loved skydiving. It had given his life a focus that really nothing else ever had.

Dave had always been a kind of average guy. He lived in a very modest house in a suburb of Houston, and for much of his life he had worked very normal blue-collar jobs, like he had been a cook at two different chain restaurants, he had managed a grocery store, and he also had worked at a soda bottling plant.

Dave was divorced and had no kids, but he had a really good group of friends who liked to go to bars and go bowling and play darts. And while Dave was never really unhappy with the way his life was going, as he started to creep into his 40s, he couldn't help but think, you know, I haven't really done anything big or important in my life.

And so, in 2004, not long after Dave got divorced, one of his good friends asked him if he wanted to go skydiving with him to celebrate that friend's 40th birthday. And Dave immediately thought to himself, "This is it. This is a chance to do something big with my life." And so he told the friend, "Yes, I'd love to go." And after that first jump that Dave did with his friend, Dave was hooked.

Whenever Dave was falling through the sky at over 100 miles per hour, it was like nothing else in the whole world even existed. Life became very simple and beautiful. The manager at Skydive Houston saw Dave come in every weekend for years to do all these jumps. And finally, he just offered Dave a job. And so that was how Dave left the soda bottling plant to become a skydiving instructor.

So August 1st, 2009 was a Saturday and Saturdays at Skydive Houston were incredibly busy with basically nonstop tandem jumps all day.

Whenever Dave was not working, so he was jumping on his own, he would always pack his own parachute because, like many other skydivers, he liked to make sure it was done exactly right. But when Dave was working, especially on Saturdays when it was so crazy busy, he didn't have time to pack and repack his parachute after every single jump because he was constantly being sent up again and again and again to take another student.

And so instead, he would take one of the pre-packed parachutes that were left out for instructors inside of their clubhouse.

That particular Saturday in August of 2009 went very quickly, with Dave going up one after another with different students and jumping out and pulling the chute and landing safely over and over again. And then finally, at the end of the day, right around four o'clock, when Dave was getting ready to be done for the day, his manager came up to him and said, hey, do you mind doing one more tandem jump?

And even though Dave was really exhausted, he's dripping sweat, it's super hot outside, he'd done six jumps that day, which was a lot, he said, no problem. And so the manager introduced Dave to a short blonde woman who was visibly nervous named Shirley Diggert, who was there to celebrate her 54th birthday by skydiving for the first time.

Her husband, her son, and her three grandkids were also there to watch her from the ground and take pictures, and her other son, who was celebrating his 30th birthday, he too was going skydiving.

As soon as Dave walked up to Shirley, he grinned and stuck out his hand, and he made the same kind of corny joke he always made with nervous first-time jumpers, and that was, don't worry, you're going to be just fine. You're going to be strapped to me, and I'm not about to let anything happen to myself. And so Shirley laughed, and she did seem like she was a little bit at ease. And so Dave patted her on the shoulder, and then he walked over, and he grabbed one of the pre-packed parachutes off the wall.

These chutes actually contained two parachutes inside of the backpack. There was the main chute, which typically is the only chute that gets deployed on a jump, and then there was the reserve chute, which is a little bit smaller and is not normally used unless there's some sort of emergency where the main chute fails.

After every jump, because the main chute has been deployed, it gets repacked and stuffed back into the backpack. But the reserve chute, because it almost never gets deployed, just stays packed. And so Skydive Houston, like basically every other skydiving facility, has certified technicians come in periodically to test the reserve chutes inside of the bag to make sure they're still packed exactly right.

After grabbing the pre-packed parachute off the wall, Dave walked back over to Shirley, who was now in the staging area, putting on her flight suit. A flight suit is a single garment, kind of looks like a big onesie for an adult. And so Dave walked over, he put the parachute down, he tugged and pulled on her flight suit to make sure it was good. And then after he was satisfied, he picked the parachute back up and he signaled to Shirley, as well as Shirley's son, who was also skydiving, to follow him.

And so the trio, they left the staging area, they went outside right to the airfield where there was a super twin otter idling and other jumpers were climbing on board to go for a jump. And so Dave, Shirley and Shirley's son got in line, they boarded the plane and a few minutes later they were airborne.

As the plane slowly climbed up to 13,500 feet, which is the jumping altitude, Shirley was sitting directly in front of Dave. They were on a bench seat on the back right of this little airplane. And Dave made a point of talking to Shirley and asking her where she was from and what she did to kind of ease her nerves.

Shirley would tell Dave that this was not the kind of thing that she typically did. In fact, she told Dave that her other son who was jumping with them, when he first decided he wanted to try skydiving a year earlier, she had desperately tried to talk him out of it, saying it was too dangerous. But recently, Shirley and her husband had decided that they needed to be more adventurous.

They lived in a quiet town in rural Texas where Shirley was a mail carrier and her husband worked in a mine, and their lives were just kind of simple and very routine-oriented and kind of boring. So when Shirley's son, who was skydiving with them that day, had asked Shirley to go skydiving on her 54th birthday, she saw it as an opportunity to break the mold and do something adventurous, and so she said yes.

And so Dave told Shirley about how he had discovered skydiving much the same way she had, and they really bonded over that. About 20 minutes after takeoff, all the tandem jumpers on the plane were now attached to their instructors, so Shirley was now buckled onto Dave. And then when they reached 13,500 feet, the jumping altitude, one of the instructors slid open the side door.

It was time to jump. And the first one who was jumping was Shirley's son. And so from all the way back in the plane, Shirley called out to her son, have a good jump, I'll see you on the ground. As her son kind of waddled to the edge of the door with his instructor and the two of them jumped out and disappeared into the air below. Next up was Shirley.

So Dave told Shirley very calmly to stand up. And so they did. They stood up right next to their bench. And then before they waddled towards the exit, Dave, for what felt like the millionth time, checked to make sure he really was securely fastened onto Shirley. And then Dave tapped his ripcord right behind him, kind of like muscle memory, reminding himself where to go. He tapped his knife on his shoulder.

He kind of just felt his equipment and then feeling ready, he said, okay, Shirley, let's go. And then the two of them kind of waddled their way towards the front of the plane where that door was slid wide open. And then they turned. So Shirley's feet were right on the edge, basically looking out into the sky right outside.

And so it's really loud. It's very windy. And Dave is right in Shirley's ear saying, OK, I'm going to count to three and we're going to jump. And then Dave reached forward. He pulled Shirley's head back. So she was looking up because he didn't want her to look down when they leapt out, because for some people that will cause them to panic when they see the ground. And so with Shirley's head back, Dave very calmly said, one, two, three. And then very gracefully, the two of them jumped out.

From the moment you jump out of a plane at 13,500 feet until you touch the ground, it takes maybe two to three minutes with about 30 seconds to a minute of actual free fall. But that two to three minutes is so intense, it feels like it's 20 minutes long.

And this was what Dave loved so much about skydiving, that intense presence you feel, that you're really in the moment. There's nothing else you can think about. It's just you careening through the sky towards the earth. It's incredible.

Dave had actually had a number of close calls in his life. Like a few years earlier, he had been riding his motorcycle when somebody hit him in their car and he fractured his skull. And then not long after that accident, he was in another accident where he fractured his spine. And after each of those two accidents and a few others, the only thought in Dave's mind was, oh my goodness, I hope I can skydive again.

And miraculously, he had been. He had made full recoveries and he was back to skydiving each time. And so now whenever he jumped out of a plane, he just felt so lucky.

The plan for that evening's jump was for Dave to rotate them 360 degrees three separate times so Shirley could get a full look down across Houston and all over Texas and just kind of see the world around her from so high up in the air. And then whenever Dave noticed that they were at 5,000 feet using his wrist altimeter, which is basically like a watch that tells you how far you are from the ground, Dave would pull the ripcord, the main chute would deploy, and they would float gently down to the ground.

And at first, that is how this jump went. After they exited the plane, they stabilized in the proper horizontal position with Shirley in front, her stomach pointing toward the ground, and Dave obviously right behind her controlling the skydive. And then after a few seconds, Dave slightly changed his body position and began rotating them 360 degrees so Shirley could look down and see all the highways and cars and barns and houses and the city off in the distance.

I mean, it's this spectacular view. And as you're falling through the sky, especially in the first few seconds of a jump, you can't tell that you're going super fast. But you're going over 120 miles an hour, which is called terminal velocity. It's literally the fastest you can fall in the air. And so you're blazing towards the ground, but it almost feels like the air is pushing you back up.

And so Shirley's having this incredible first time experience, just really taking it all in. And Dave, even though he had done this hundreds of times, was having a wonderful time as well. But Dave really was just focused on his altimeter because when they hit 5,000 feet, he needed to pull the parachute. And so they're cruising along, Dave's checking his altimeter over and over again. And then finally he sees 5,000 feet. He quickly looks around him to scan for any other jumpers. He's clear.

And so he reached back and he pulled his ripcord handle for his main chute. Now, normally when you deploy your main parachute, depending on what kind of parachute you're using, there's actually kind of a slow unfurling. It's not like suddenly the chute is deployed and then you just stop. That would not work. You'd get destroyed every time you skydive.

So the way it's packed is it kind of unfurls slowly and it's like a gradual slowing down. But after Dave has pulled the ripcord handle, there was an immediate yank of the parachute backpack up and away from him. And then from somewhere above him, he heard a loud popping sound. Now, Dave had jumped enough times to know that this was not normal. There was a problem and he would be right.

The main parachute had deployed out of the backpack, but it got tangled on the way out, and so it did not inflate at all, and so as a result, it was not slowing them down at all.

But worse than that was this tangled up parachute was still attached to them and it kind of became like a sail. And it turned Dave and Shirley onto their sides and began whipping them around in something called a death spiral, where literally you're just spinning so unbelievably fast that normally jumpers will actually lose consciousness. They're spinning so fast.

But Dave, being a very experienced skydiver, he tried to stay calm. He tried to track his way out of this death spiral, which is when you put your arms and legs straight and try to go in a straight line through the air. But it didn't work. He just kept on spinning faster and faster. And at this point, Shirley, she's practically losing consciousness. She's yelling what's going on. And Dave is just trying to stay calm. He's still trying to get out of it, but he knows there's no way.

But Dave remembers he has two knives. And so he decides he's going to cut away this tangled main chute and then deploy his reserve chute because you don't want to open your reserve directly into a tangled parachute. And so he reaches up, he's spinning remember, he reaches up and he grabs the first knife. However, the lines of the tangled parachute had actually tangled on his shoulder strap where that first knife was. And so he literally couldn't get to the knife.

And so now they're below 5,000 feet. They're at like 4,000, closing in on 3,000 feet. I mean, they're coming close to the ground here and they don't have a canopy. But Dave, he stays calm. They're spinning around. He can't get that first knife. And so he reaches for the second knife, which was placed in front of Shirley. But because of how quickly they were spinning, he couldn't quite get his arm out to grab the second knife. It was just impossible to grab it.

And so without any other options, Dave had to pull his reserve chute knowing it was going to go straight into this tangled mess right above them.

And so the reserve chute, it deploys and it does work, at least at first. There's that gradual slowing down sensation that Dave immediately feels. Their spin begins to stop. And for a second, it seems like they're going to be saved by this reserve chute because by now they're only about 2,000 feet from the ground. However, the worst case scenario happens to Dave and Shirley.

as soon as their reserve chute was up over their head, inflated, their main chute suddenly caught air and inflated as well. So they had two parachutes. Now, you can land with two parachutes, absolutely. However, sometimes in a worst case scenario, the two parachutes will catch wind going in opposite directions. So basically the parachutes will go out to either side of the jumper or jumpers if it's tandem, and then you basically have wings that

aim the jumpers straight at the ground. It's like an accelerant. It causes them to literally speed up straight towards the ground. And once you start moving in this position, which is known as a down plane, it's almost impossible to get out of it because the faster you go, the more inflated these two parachutes become.

And so Dave knows they are less than 2,000 feet from the ground. They're in a down plane, which is almost always fatal. And so all he can do is try to get out of the down plane. And so Dave, with all his might, he begins yanking on the different lines of both parachutes. And he manages to get them out of the down plane, which is nearly impossible to do. He does it. And then both parachutes collapse.

And suddenly, Dave and Shirley have no parachute. They're less than a thousand feet from the ground. And they are falling once again over 100 miles per hour straight down to the earth. Now, at this moment, Shirley is crying. She's screaming. She doesn't know what's going on. And Dave has this incredible sense of calm come over him.

Years ago, Dave had given up on the idea of ever having a family or of having kids. He was a really good guy who would have been a great father, but it just wasn't in the cards for him. Instead, Dave had found skydiving.

Oftentimes, Dave would stay late at Skydive Houston and just sit around the campfire with the other instructors and the other jumpers and drink beers and eat burgers and tell stories. And sometimes Dave would even sleep the night at Skydive Houston because he didn't want to go back home to his empty three bedroom house where all he wanted to do when he was there was go skydiving again.

But now, literally staring down his own death, knowing that it's going to happen any second, the only thing he could think about was Shirley. He didn't care if he died. He felt like he had found his calling. If he died doing it, so be it. But Shirley, her husband, her son on the ground, her son skydiving, her three grandkids, they're going to see Shirley hit the ground and die. He just couldn't handle it. He thought, I have to do something to protect Shirley.

And with only a few hundred feet to the ground, Dave yelled to Shirley, "Tuck your knees up!" And Shirley immediately did it. She threw her knees up and as she did, Dave pulled back as hard as he possibly could on the risers and the toggles in an attempt to switch places with Shirley. Shirley was in front of him. Her body's gonna hit the ground first. Dave flipped them around so that his back was gonna hit the ground first. He was going to sacrifice himself to maybe save Shirley.

When they hit the ground, people a quarter mile away heard their impact. And when they hit the ground, all of Shirley's family saw it. Everybody saw it. They went running over to the crash site. And when they got there, there was this tangle of bodies and this parachute. And as they're staring at it, they watched one of the bodies move. It was Shirley. She was alive.

After paramedics arrived, they cut her off of Dave's body and they rushed her to the hospital where she had serious injuries, several broken vertebrae, and very significant internal injuries, but none of them were life-threatening. She would survive. However, three days after arriving in the hospital, Shirley got devastating news. Dave had been rushed to the hospital as well right after Shirley had, but he finally had succumbed to his injuries and passed away.

Dave's last-ditch maneuver had worked. He had saved Shirley's life at the cost of his own. However, not long after Shirley and her family found out about Dave's death, they got another call, and this time it was to tell them that the news about Dave's death was premature. He was not dead. However, he was paralyzed from the neck down.

A few weeks later, after Shirley got out of the hospital, she immediately went to the intensive care unit where Dave was being treated to see him for the first time since their accident. And when she saw him, he was sitting in a wheelchair covered in tubes and wires, and she just stood there looking at him. And Dave, when he saw Shirley, he just started to cry. At this point, Shirley walked up to him, she gave him a hug, and she said, I love you.

Today, Dave and Shirley are still friends. Shirley has recovered completely because of Dave's heroic act. Dave, on the other hand, remains paralyzed and only has a little bit of feeling in his right arm.

He now lives in Texas with his mother, who looks after him full-time, and they desperately need our support. My family has already made a donation to his GoFundMe page, and I hope some of you will do the same thing. You can find his GoFundMe page in the description below, and after speaking with him, he assured me that all of the donation money is being used to take care of himself. He has a lot of care that he needs, his mom can't do it alone, and so anything we give them is just making his life a little bit easier.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more strange, dark, and mysterious content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts. They are this one, of course, Mr. Ballin Podcast, and we also have Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, we have Bedtime Stories, and also Run Full. To find those other podcasts, all you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you listen to your podcasts.

To watch hundreds more stories just like the ones you heard today, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. And before you go, please

Please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. We know the six wives of Henry VIII as pawns in his hunt for a son, but their lives were so much more than just being the king's wives. I'm Arisha Skidmore-Williams. And I'm Brooke Ziffrin. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Royals. In each episode, we'll pull back the curtain on royal families past and present from all over the world.

to show you the darker side of what it means to be royalty. We rarely see Henry VIII's wives in their own light, as women who use the tools available to them to hold on to power. Some women won the game, others lost, but they were all unexpected agents in their own stories. Being a part of a royal family might seem enticing, but more often than not, it comes at the expense of everything else, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes, you.

Even your head. Follow Even the Royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Go deeper and get more of the story with Wondery's top history podcasts, including American Scandal, Legacy, and Black History for Real.