California skydiver broke her femur jumping near Lodi. Here’s how it happened
A Davis veterinary technician broke her hip and femur last month skydiving at a Northern California facility with a history of tragedies, but she lays blame for the incident elsewhere: her own hair.
Elizabeth Stewart, 25, has been recovering since an early October jump from the Parachute Center near Lodi. The drop zone has been the site of more than two dozen fatalities, as The Sacramento Bee reported in a 2023 investigation.
“This was not Lodi’s fault,” said Stewart, who has been jumping recreationally for about a year and a half. “It was just an accident.”
Stewart and three friends jumped Oct. 7 from a Cessna on a clear and sunny day with light wind and made a four-person formation in the sky known as a “sit fly” — “sitting in the sky,” she explained.
It marked career jump No. 135 for Stewart, a vet tech at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s small animal hospital.
“The reason why this accident happened is I have long hair.”
Jumpers with long hair often wear some sort of headband, a cloth under their helmet to keep hair from tangling with equipment or knotting in the wind gusts, Stewart explained.
Stewart’s slipped, came down over her eyes and cut all visibility of the sky, she said.
She couldn’t see, but Stewart said knew her general position relative to her three fellow jumpers.
“Mind you, we’re falling at 150 mph, so we’re losing altitude fast,” Stewart said in a phone interview Thursday from Southern California, where she’s recovering with family. “And I knew that I was below the other jumpers. If I would have pulled my parachute, I would have collided into them, potentially.”
Stewart was below 1,800 feet, she estimated, when she finally pulled her main parachute. Pulling at that low altitude meant that her main chute, which she packed, and reserve chute, connected to an automatic activation device packed by an FAA-licensed rigger, both deployed at the same time.
This can create “wildly unpredictable” conditions, said Stewart, who received her bachelor’s degree in animal science from UC Davis earlier this year.
She remained mostly stable in the sky until an altitude of about 50 to 100 feet, when the two parachutes separated. She shot straight down, landing in an open field at a high speed and crashing into the ground.
Stewart fractured the mid-shaft of her femur and the femoral neck, or hip, on the same leg. Paramedics responded, and an ambulance rushed her to a hospital, where she had emergency surgery and remained in care for a week, she said.
“They almost had to do a full hip replacement, but they were able to save the hip.”
Skydiving in Lodi
The Parachute Center, along Highway 99 in Acampo, opened in 1981. At least 28 people have died in incidents tied to the business since 1985, a Sacramento Bee investigation.
The business made national headlines starting in August 2016, when recent high school graduate Tyler Turner fell to his death, along with his skydiving tandem instructor, while celebrating Turner’s 18th birthday. Turner’s family sued the Parachute Center and its founder William Dause in 2018, and in March 2021, a San Joaquin County judge issued a $40 million default judgment against Dause.
As of the 2023 Bee investigation, Dause had not paid any amount toward the judgment and told Bee journalists he neither planned nor had the money to do so.
The most recent reported death at the Parachute Center came in April 2021, when 57-year-old Sabrina Call died after her main and reserve parachutes entangled while in the air. Call was an experienced skydiver, Dause said.
Stewart on Thursday said she’s aware of the Parachute Center’s reputation and that though the site has been “ridiculed” for past accidents, she has jumped there often.
SkyDance Skydiving in Davis is her home drop zone, and Stewart has jumped all throughout California including sites in Perris and Elsinore since she took up the hobby.
Stewart called skydiving peaceful and her “whole life” in the months leading up to the accident.
Her favorite part is the feeling of free fall.
‘I’m not afraid’
Stewart has been unable to work since then. She shared gratitude for her health insurance coverage, which she said paid her $283,000 hospital bill.
But Stewart started a GoFundMe page this week to raise money for living costs as she remains out of work and is running out of paid leave. It had raised $280 toward a $1,500 goal as of Thursday afternoon.
“While this injury feels very devastating, I’m not afraid to jump again,” she said. “I also don’t want anyone to be scared to go skydiving because of this.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2025 at 3:02 PM.
CORRECTION: This story was changed in its identification of how Elizabeth Stewart held her hair in place.
