


It’s never too late to cross something off your bucket list.
At 104 years old, Dorothy Hoffner became the oldest-living person to parachute from a plane on Sunday.
The lifelong Chicagoan pushed aside her walker to board a plane at Skydive Chicago Airport in Ottawa, about 80 miles southwest of Chicago.
“It was nice, peaceful. I had to keep myself awake so I could see that scenery,” Hoffner said after landing.
Hoffner broke the current Guinness World Record for the oldest tandem parachute jump set in 2022 by a 103-year-old in Sweden. Certification of her record is pending.
Hoffner became interested in skydiving years ago and tried it for the first time on her 100th birthday. As she put it, that flight happened “B.C. — before COVID.”
For this jump, she declined to wear a jumpsuit, instead donning a light blue sweater, dark blue trousers and goggles
Hoffner’s jump was originally set for September but was rescheduled three times for bad weather.
Another world record was set in Ottawa in 2015, when 164 skydivers flying head-down built the largest ever vertical skydiving formation.
In 2012, a man in Ottawa broke a record for skydiving with the largest flag. Fareed Lafta of Iraq broke a record for carrying an Iraq flag measuring more than 13,000 square feet.