Michael Graham had already made 1,725 successful skydives before the jump that would change his life forever and make him a lifelong Red Cross blood donor.

It was Halloween Day in 1995, and Michael was employed as a skydiving instructor in Virginia. He had made three or four jumps that morning with first-time students. Next up, a man with more experience who was working to get his skydiving license.

“This was going to be a fun jump,” said Michael, who now lives in Nampa, Idaho. “This guy knows what he’s doing and has really done well through the program. This was not a high-pressure jump.”

Michael, 28 at the time, had an idea. While the student would land in a wide-open area in the drop zone, Michael would do something special he was sure his trainee would never forget.

“There was a pond on the drop zone, and I thought, ‘Gosh, when I come in for a landing, I would speed up my landing, come across the pond and shoot a rooster tail as if I were waterskiing. I would then skim out across the top of the pond, and I would land on dry ground on the other side.’”

Easier imagined than done.

The pond was boxed in by 100-foot pine trees on three sides, giving Michael little margin for error. As he closed in on the landing zone, the wind pushed Michael, making it difficult for him to get in the proper position to make the turn with enough height. That’s when he began to realize things weren’t going as planned. Still, he thought he would be OK.

“I got myself into that kind of danger zone really out of ego,” he said. “I thought at that time I was really indestructible. I had never been hurt skydiving, and I had 1,725 jumps.”

To build up the speed he needed to get across the pond, he made a 90-degree turn. But he was too low.

“I hit the ground about 10 feet before the pond – in a dive,” he said.

His knees struck first, instantly breaking both femurs. To make matters even worse, he front-flipped into the pond and its frigid October waters. A group on the ground immediately rushed to Michael’s aid, pulling him from the water and calling a lifeflight helicopter. A short time later, Michael was at a hospital in Fairfax, having 18-inch titanium rods inserted into each femur.

The surgery went well, and the next day doctors had plans for Michael to stand. But then he began feeling nauseous with a pounding headache.

“Someone came into the room and said, ‘My God Mike, you look like a ghost. All the color in your face is gone … you don’t have any color in your skin. I think we have a problem here.’”

Because of the severity of the injury, blood was pooling in Michael’s legs and struggling to travel to his head, heart and upper extremities. Doctors rushed to give him three units of blood.

“Almost immediately my color came back, and I felt so much better,” he said. “If I had not gotten that blood transfusion and if it wouldn’t have been caught at that time it would have been extremely dire.”

 A few days later, Michael left the hospital and would begin a grueling regimen of physical therapy, setting his mind on not only walking normally again but also returning to skydiving. For 40 hours a week for the next six months, Michael toiled away at the YMCA, making regaining strength and mobility a full-time job.

All that work paid off.

Just seven months after being pulled from a pond with two broken legs, Michael was back in a plane, ready to make his first jump since his terrifying accident. There was more than a little trepidation.

“It was actually more nerve wracking than it was to do my first jump,” he said. “On my first jump I didn’t know what to anticipate. On my 1,726 jump, I knew what I was getting myself into.”

There was no pond swooping this time, and the jump went off without a hitch.

“When I landed, all my friends gave me a high-five,” he said. “And then we packed up the parachute and did another one later that day.”

Some 16,000 more jumps would follow as Michael returned to work as a skydiving instructor. On one of those jumps he met his wife-to-be, who was making her first skydive to celebrate her 30th birthday.

Now 55, Michael no longer jumps out of planes but remains grateful to his medical team, physical therapist and Red Cross blood donors for giving him the opportunity to return to the sky and find a partner along the way.

“Even after the accident – as traumatic as it was – I got to go back and do my passion, and the Red Cross in a way helped me with that,” he said. “Had it not been for getting back on the horse and keeping the dream alive I wouldn’t have met my wonderful wife.”

The accident also cemented Michael as a lifetime Red Cross blood donor. Despite a fear of needles –hard to believe for a guy who has jumped out of planes 17,000 times -- Michael now has a two-gallon donor pin and donates as often as he can.

“Because of that three pints I got in the hospital I really wanted to give back,” he said. “It really left an imprint of how important it is.”

And that fear of needles has subsided as well. He urges those who have never donated before to give it a try, even those who might be apprehensive.

“It’s just a momentary pinch and there’s no pain to it,” he said. “Overcoming that little bit of fear really opens up the gate. You need a community in order to thrive and if you don’t have people who are willing to give of themselves then that hampers us from growing and thriving.

“Once you have given blood you never ask why you would do it. You ask yourself, ‘When can I do it again?’”

DONATE LIFESAVING BLOOD

Every two seconds, someone in this country needs lifesaving blood, including patients here in Idaho. To find a blood drive near you and make an appointment to donate, visit RedCrossBlood.org and enter your zip code or call 800-RED-CROSS. Donating blood takes less than an hour and can help save more than one life.