Army parachutist, videographer has done nearly 7,500 jumps

When Scott Janise grew up in the east valley, his mother Patti Janise never thought that he would jump out of airplanes.

“When he started jumping, he would call me to tell me when he was going to jump,” Patti said. “I told him, ‘Please don’t tell me until afterward.’ I would literally bite my nails, just worried to death.”

Scott is a member of the Golden Knights, the U.S. Army demonstration and competition parachute team. In September, he and his team won gold in female 4-way formation skydiving at the 2016 World Parachuting Championships at Skydive Chicago. Janise is the videographer for the team, jumping just after the four women performed a set of prescribed formations in order and in rapid succession, attempting to form as many as possible in 35 seconds while falling toward the earth at about 120 mph.

“My job as the videographer is to fly above (the team) and capture all of the different formations they are doing,” Scott said. “ As soon as I land, I turn my video over to the judges.”

The Chaparral High School graduate had always been intrigued by skydiving. His mother said she traces that interest back to a family vacation to Niagara Falls, where he saw bungee jumping. She said if they had been at home, she probably wouldn’t have agreed to it, but because they were on vacation, she let him do it.

“On the tape, you can hear me screaming on the ground, but he had a ball,” Patti said. “I think that started his love of jumping.”

The 42-year-old joined the Army in 1995 and still comes back to visit his family a few times a year. It was on one of those visits that he finally indulged his skydiving itch.

“My brother and I had always talked about skydiving,” Scott said. “I came home on leave in 1998. I’d just gotten back from Bosnia, and my brother and I went out to Jean and did our first jump. After that, I was hooked.”

It took him a few years to get into a parachute school in the Army, but after he did, he went to Golden Knight selection in 2002 and made the cut. The team travels the country and sometimes beyond to demonstrations and competitions.

“I enjoy the military, and I enjoy jumping, so being able to put the two together is an amazing job,” Scott said. “I’m very lucky to be in this position and to be able to do what I love to do.”

Before joining the Knights, Scott spent time as a parachute rigger and he still packs the team’s back-up chutes. The individual members are responsible for packing their own main chutes.

“When you’re in the sport long enough, there’s going to be an issue with the parachute eventually,” Scott said. “If there’s issues with the main parachute, you can cut that away and pull your reserve. I have had to pull my reserve seven times.”

Scott has done nearly 7,500 jumps, and he said it’s second nature to him now, although he still gets butterflies in his stomach when he’s jumping in a new place. As an example, he cited a jump in Dubai, where the team jumped out over the ocean, over the Palm Islands, a group of man-made islands in the shape of a palm tree. The plan to let the winds carry them back to land went off without a hitch, but it brought back a touch of his initial trepidation tinged with excitement

“There was a little bit of fear,” he said. “Jumping out of planes is not normal. It took me about 50 jumps to get over the fear of jumping out of an airplane.”

Scott has three more years left until he can retire, but he says he will stay in the military as long as they’ll let him.

Patti has three sons and a daughter. All have served or are serving in the military. One son was a tank commander, and one is training to be a Clark County firefighter. Her daughter swims with sharks as a marine biologist in an aquarium in Arizona.

She is very proud of all of her children, but she does worry some. She had never wanted to watch Scott jump, but she was finally convinced to go out to Jean and see him jump with a mixed group of civilians. She joked that she’d be the one running around with a mattress trying to catch him. As it turned out, watching the jump was a very good thing.

“I watched a bunch of these people landing, and they were all going head over teakettle,” Patti said. “They were coming in on their butts and sliding or whatever. Scott was just up there floating. I watched my child come down, and as he got close to the ground, he did something with his chute, and it was just like he’d stepped off of a cloud. He just stepped down, and I thought, ‘That kid knows what he’s doing, and I don’t need to worry about it anymore.’ Watching him was the best decision I made in my life.”

To reach East Valley View reporter F. Andrew Taylor, email ataylor@viewnews.com or call 702-380-4532.