A 44-year-old man was critically injured after a parachute malfunction during a BASE jump from the Tombstone exit, a well-known launch point near Moab, on November 29, 2024.
This week, staff from Grand County EMS, Search and Rescue, and Classic Air Medical were formally honored with the Life Saver Award for their swift, coordinated response that saved the man’s life.
Officials this week called the rescue “a save,” crediting the outcome to the professionalism, skill, and teamwork of the first responders and courageous bystanders—also crediting the patient, identified online as Andrew Kalinyak, with “resilience and unwavering spirit in recovery [that] are nothing short of inspiring.”
The incident occurred at 12:47 p.m. when the jumper’s parachute collapsed mid-air, causing him to strike the cliff face multiple times before crashing onto a steep slope below. Within a minute of dispatch, Grand County EMS was en route and reached Kalinyak within 20 minutes to provide extensive life support.
In an Instagram post, Kalinyak said that he had suffered a “broken femur, broken tailbone, fractured pelvis, 7 fractured vertebrae, 9 broken ribs, a broken wrist, a broken nasal cavity, a full rotator cuff tear, and a collapsed lung.”
The Search and Rescue team coordinated a complex litter lower down the slope; staff from Classic Air Medical performed a finger thoracostomy at the staging area, inserting a finger into the man’s chest cavity to clear air or fluid before he was airlifted to St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction.
Kalinyak spent two months in the hospital and thanked, among many others, “all of my BASE friends that helped that day, to the strangers who were just there watching who put themselves in danger to assist, to the Grand County SAR, EMS, and Sheriffs, to whomever put me on a massive dose of ketamine and decompressed my collapsed lung on the talus.”
From the initial call to helicopter departure, the operation spanned just under two and a half hours—nearly two of which involved continuous on-scene care by EMS.
Personnel honored with the Life Saver Award include: paramedic Jordan Lister, paramedic Mike Flanagan, AEMT Amra Hubbard, and Captain Logan Brewer from Grand County EMS; RN Craig Campbell, paramedic Thomas Zimmerman, and pilot Greg Walther from Classic Air Medical; and Maggie Nielsen, Jeff Clapp, and Nick Van Epp from Grand County Search and Rescue.
“This was not just a rescue,” a statement read. “It was a testament to what coordinated emergency response can do when every second counts.”
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