On June 2 of 2025, a month before her 76th birthday, Patty Prewitt had her head in the clouds—in an airplane ten thousand feet above ground, strapped with a parachute and a video camera, and eagerly waiting to plummet toward the ground at 120 miles per hour.

Before stepping out into a total freefall, Patty told the skydiving instructor, “If we die, I want you to play the video of my fall at my funeral because funerals are dull, and this’ll liven up the place.”

Patty walks through life with a keen sense of humor and infectious kindness. But six months prior to her triumphant act of hurling herself from a plane, Patty sat within the walls of the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, Missouri, serving out a life sentence for a crime she maintains did not

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