>> craig stapleton. >> where are you?uth of the drop zone in the wine [ bleep ] field. >> amazingly stapleton is breathing and conscious but does he have internal injuries? >> i'm allergic to penicillin and iso dine. >> the first person to get to me was katie, and the relief, i can still hear it in my mind, oh, my gosh, you're still alive. >> he's rushed to the hospital and released that night with no broken bones and only minlor bruises. >> at 7:00 p.m. that night i walked out of the emergency room. >> in the hospital parking lot, friends are waiting to celebrate. >> it was probably the best sight i've ever seen. >> it turns out, stapleton may owe his life to the one row of freshly plowed dirt that helped to soften his 8,000-foot fall. >> so i landed right about here in front of one of these plants. >> five weeks after the accident, craig stapleton's back doing complicated formations. and there just may be another stars and stripes jump in his future. >> i pulled all the equipment out for that jump and i was looking at i

doing 60 to 70 miles an hour straight at the ground. >> stapleton is in a death spiral. >> i released my end of the flag so the problem became just craigsstarted just following him down. >> stapleton manages to free his arms and release the flag. but he's losing all the attitude, and hope, fast. >> now i'm down to one problem i have a malfunctioned parachute. sky divers are trained from jump one how to deal with a malfunctioned parachute. you reach down and pull the handle and release the parachute. >> the handle is jammed, so the only way to release the chute is to cut it free. but he is spining so violently he can't reach. >> i couldn't do it. >> fighting desperately for his life stapleton is down to his last resort. >> i was 20 seconds from being laying dead in a field. i stopped doing what i was doing and i fired my reserve. >> i was watching and i was like please clear, please clear, please don't tangle up. it was worst case scenario. >> stapleton's reserve parachute is so tangled it can't help the primary chute slow down his fall. >> i am at 500 feet and i have got a few seconds to think about what is important and say good-bye. >