Student goes to extremes to fundraise for Alzheimer's research

After Caroline Magee’s father was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2013, she jumped into action — literally — by jumping out of a plane Sept. 22.

“I wanted to feel like I was doing something,” she says.

Every 66 seconds, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, and more than 5 million Americans currently live with the disease. But 200,000 more have early-onset Alzheimer’s, which affects people in their 40s and 50s.

“People say they had a grandparent who had it, but it’s different when it’s your own parent,” Magee says. “So many people are suffering from it. That’s why we have to raise money and jump out of planes.”

But Magee is no stranger to great heights. Among her favorite memories: Flying with her dad, a former pilot who loved to give lessons in their small, family-owned plane.

“He was such a teacher,” Magee says of her father, who has also worked as a lawyer and professor at Washington and Lee University. “He’d say he was going to take a nap and that I could fly myself for 10 minutes — I realized later he’d had autopilot on, but he wanted me to feel like I was flying the plane.”

Her skydiving stunt raised $4,125, but Magee says she hopes to reach a total of $5,000. She plans to use the money to fund research at the Alzheimer’s Association and the local support group in her hometown of Roanoke, Va.

And Magee says she had a personal takeaway from the jump: She broke out of her comfort zone while simultaneously helping her family and others struggling.

“When you have Alzheimer’s, there is no control,” she said. “When I jumped out, it was me taking control back in this awful disease and not letting it get me down.”