PORTRAITS Karen McCollough

I’VE MADE A LOT OF MY FRIENDS REALLY sick,” 32-year-old Karen McCollough says pertly. She’s not referring to any culinary failings, but rather to her talent for throwing a plane around the heavens. “I’ll take friends up, do a couple hammerheads [standing the plane on its tail], and they get a little green.” The gregarious West Texas native placed first in 1994 s National Aerobatics Contest, the Olympics of national aviation. (Her father, the late Dr. Bill McCollough, captured the same title in 1975.) “My brother’s a pilot for American, so flying is a family affair,” says Karen, who grew up tinkering with her dad’s plane and earned her pilot’s license at 17.

A University of Texas at Dallas graduate, Karen earned extra money during her school days by strapping herself to the top wing of a stunt biplane and being flung through space. It’s called wing-walking, and she worked with Jimmy Franklin, a world-renowned airshow pilot.

She’s had her share of scarier moments, too, like the time her engine quit in a spin at 2,000 feet. “I got it started again, obviously,” she says, “but I had a bit of spin-o-phobia for a while.” Karen stresses, though, the perfect safety record of competitive U.S. aerobatics and the reliability of her Swick Taylorcraft, a plane willed to her by her father. “I know it sounds crazy, but I love that plane,” she says. “The feeling of freedom and spirituality when I’m up there is just unreal.”