For Carrington Crain, a freshman sports medicine major, the sky is her favorite place.
Growing up in a big family who are all crazy about flying, Crain has always dreamt about having her moment in the sky. That dream became a reality when she got her pilot’s license just one day before she packed her bags and moved from her hometown in Arkansas to Malibu, California.
“When you watch a really great sunset from the pilot seat in the cockpit, you’ll never want to watch it anywhere else again,” Crain said.
Crain started hanging out at the airport when she was just a baby.
“My mom would take me and my brothers to the airport on the weekends to watch my dad fly,” Crain said. “And I started developing this obsession with the sky.”
The obsession runs deep in the family. Crain’s grandfather Larry Senior, 76, started flying when he was 43. Crain’s father, Larry Junior, 53, as well as her brother, Chandler, 26, also followed in his footsteps.
Crain’s father, Larry, started flying when he was only 16.
“He would skip school just to practice his flying skills,” Crain said. “He loved it that much.”
Crain’s father now runs a business of charter airplanes, which provided Crain and her siblings with countless opportunities to be around planes.
On her 14th birthday, Crain received her father’s pilot handbook. Flipping through the wrinkled pages full of scribbles and notes, she realized that she wanted to be a certified pilot, just like her father.
“I’ve never met a person more determined than Carrington,” freshman business major Monique Go said. “When she has a goal, she pursues it relentlessly.”
However, the journey of getting certified was harder than Crain had imagined.
“It was extremely time-consuming,” Crain said. “I spent all my weekends in senior year of high school at the airport instead of with friends.”
Her biggest memories of that year consist of sleepless nights reading up on how to control the plane during a storm or how to perform an emergency landing as she spent a total of 85 hours practicing her skills.
But her hard work paid off. It was a surreal moment for Crain when she held her license in her hand for the first time.
“It proved to me that dreams do come true, as long as I put my heart into it,” she said.
Crain joked that the reason she has her license with her at all times is because most people refuse to believe that she is a certified pilot.
“They don’t understand that girls can be pilots too,” Crain said.
However, she never allows people’s doubts to get in her way as she continues to practice her skills at the Santa Monica Municipal Airport.
“She is a very stubborn person,” said Crain’s roommate Brenna Ware, a freshman biology major. “She knows what she wants and is not afraid to go after it.”
However, Crain said her dream job is not to fly as a commercial pilot but to become a chiropractor.
Crain attributed her passion for helping others and her interest in the human body as the reasons why she has decided to become a chiropractor.
“I think that flying commercially will take away the part I love about flying which is the freedom,” she said. “I chose to study sports medicine because I want to eventually attend chiropractic school and make it my profession.”
Crain, who cites Maverick from “Top Gun” as her biggest inspiration, believes her journey of becoming a qualified pilot has taught her more than just being able to do maneuvers. It made her a stronger person.
“Carrington is the first young female pilot I’ve met,” Carol Lee, a freshman sports medicine major, said. “That title itself is an achievement.”
Crain’s biggest advice for those who wish to become a pilot is to keep going.
“Don’t quit,” she said. “It gets hard, but just keep going because at the end of the day there’s still going to be wind under the wings.
Sandy Liu completed this story in Dr. Christina Littlefield’s spring 2016 Jour 241 class.
