Waypoints: Setting the ruse

It’s a challenge we face every 18 months or so as an outside firm randomly selects a winner for the AOPA membership sweepstakes grand prize—typically a refurbished airplane. From there, we scheme ways to surprise the winner through some ruse to get him or her to an airport where we’ve quietly positioned the airplane.

In this case, the winner was Wade H. Shealy. He was about to become the owner of our Sweepstakes Super Cub prize—an immaculately refurbished 1954 Piper Super Cub that is far better than new, thanks to the craftsmen at Baker Air Service in Baker, Montana, and a host of other industry supporters. But first we had to figure out how to surprise him.

A search of AOPA and FAA records showed that Shealy was 81 years old and a student pilot—an unusual combination. On Facebook, we found a few old posts and just one photo of him, looking a little like Santa Claus.

I called a few contacts around the Greenville, South Carolina, area where he lives, hoping to find an inroad. Nada.

The clock was running, as we wanted to deliver the airplane before EAA AirVenture—we had only two weeks to find out more about him, come up with a ruse, and coordinate the timing with his schedule, that of AOPA President Mark Baker, and good weather to move the VFR-only airplane to his airport.

We considered manufacturing an event under the guise of the United Flying Octogenarians, an organization made up of pilots age 80 or older—hoping we could get him to come. But after considering that and numerous other options, we elected to instead call him using the AOPA You Can Fly initiative’s Flight Training Experience Survey as cover. You Can Fly Executive Director Elizabeth Tennyson called him to say that he had been selected for a phone interview as part of our survey project to understand the experience of student pilots at their flight schools. Through that call she learned that he had been flying at USAeroFlight at Greenville Downtown Airport, frequently flying with Cecil Tune, his 79-year-old flight instructor. With that tidbit, the ruse started to come together.

A call to Tune and later to Brett Zukowski, a partner at the flight school, got us more information, especially after we clued them into what we were attempting to do. They agreed to help and, most important, to keep the process a secret.

Online Associate Editor David Tulis was up next—calling Shealy to say that Tennyson had reported in about his interesting experience as a senior citizen student and would he mind telling Tulis a bit more about it. Tulis, himself a Southerner, struck up a good conversation and let Shealy know that he would like to do an in-person video interview. Would Shealy be willing to come out to USAeroFlight on Monday, July 15, at 10 a.m. to participate? Shealy bought it, and our date was set.

We now had six days left to move the airplane and arrange all the other logistics to surprise him. With thunderstorms forecast to threaten the region over the weekend, Editor at Large Dave Hirschman jumped in the Super Cub and flew it to Greenville, squirreling it away in a hangar at Greenville Jet Center.

A small team of us launched in two general aviation airplanes on Sunday, July 14, arriving in Greenville in time to give the airplane a quick detailing and to transfer it to a slot in the USAeroFlight hangar. With Zukowski, we then walked the property and scoped out the exact movements of where Tulis would meet Shealy, how and where the fake interview would be conducted, and what would happen moment by moment leading up to the big reveal. Meanwhile, Media Relations Senior Manager Jennifer Non was working the phones with local media—attempting to convince them to come out and cover the story but without revealing too much about the winner.

As you can read in “Pilot Briefing: ‘Unbelievable,’” on p. 34, the ruse played out exactly as we had planned it. Shealy showed up for his “interview.” A few minutes into the interview Tulis suggested they go outside to get video of him next to an airplane. Meanwhile, we had quietly rolled the pristine Super Cub from the hangar out onto the ramp.

Shealy didn’t believe Baker at first when told he had won the airplane. He thought Baker was just joking around. But after a few tries, Baker convinced him. Shealy’s first act: to give a bear hug to his instructor, Tune, and to Zukowski from the flight school. It is clear he has enjoyed his flight training experience. Another life changed by an AOPA sweepstakes airplane.

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