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Balloon Boy

Content below is from #182 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

  • This week I recommend you watch Netflix Original LOVE
    • Here’s the plot:
      • When his cheating girlfriend leaves him, people-pleasing nice-guy Gus (Paul Rust, “I Love You, Beth Cooper” and “Inglorious Basterds”) moves into a trendy apartment complex inhabited by lots of college students. A chance encounter introduces him to wild-child Mickey (Gillian Jacobs, “Community”), also recently single, and who despises her job in radio. Though wildly different, the two are drawn to each other, and that relationship is the basis for the Judd Apatow-helmed Netflix original series. And in the end, their differences may be what help them figure out just what love is.
    • It was created by comedy writing giant Judd Apatow and it has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes
    • It’s good, it’s funny, and it was one of the shows I thoroughly enjoyed binging back in college.
  • It very loosely ties into today’s main event:

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

  • Search your memory of the past decade-plus, back before Covid, before the war in Ukraine, before Harambe, and before Occupy Wall Street…
    • Remember Balloon Boy?
    • My wife and I were watching that Netflix Original show titled LOVE when the main character referenced Balloon Boy. When he did, my long-term memory dusted off that old file and I sat up in my seat exclaiming “Holy shit! I forgot all about Balloon Boy!”
      • That’s when Shannon revealed she had ZERO recollection of the Balloon Boy incident from the late 2000’s… and I promptly jotted down “Balloon Boy – news story from a decade or so ago” into my “Who’d a Thunk It Ideas” note in my phone. … and here we are.
  • In 2009 a US couple told the world their son had been carried away by a balloon. The story began when Richard and Mayumi Heene told police that their six-year-old son had floated away in a helium balloon. Rescue services scrambled to save him, but it was revealed to be a hoax within the same day.
    • That’s the gist of it. But this story received so much media attention, just a few years after smart phones were invented so the story went Viral like a lot of stupid news stories did back then. People were just happy to read about some stupid shit on their phones in 2009.
      • We take them for granted, but smartphones are incredible, and I know there is a decent chunk of the population that doesn’t remember a time before they existed and were in everyone’s pocket… I do though.
      • When those things first came out it was like we had stepped into the future. We had computers in our hands and we could use them to download stupid apps like the lighter app and the drinking beer app LOL
  • The entire country was transfixed by the story of Balloon Boy.
    • That image of that silver UFO-looking balloon floating in the sky was on virtually every news outlet for a few hours.
      • I remember it. I was a sophomore in High School about to turn 17 years old.
  • Will Leitch from OneZero.Medium.com writes:

The story was absurd. How did this boy get in there? How did this balloon get loose? What kind of balloon was this, anyway? The story was so strange, so random, that you almost had to take it at face value: Why would someone make up details so intricate and weird? It didn’t occur that it might not be real, because why wouldn’t it be real? It had the specific insanity of something that was true.

  • NPR’s David Folkenflik explains the possibilities the media was trying to captivate. Pointing out that lots of kids go missing at the mall for an hour or so, but none of them get this kind of media coverage:

In this case, there were at the outset only three possible broad outcomes to the tale. Bluntly put:

1. The boy could have survived an epic cross-state accidental flight.

2. The boy could have been killed or badly hurt either in the air or upon the balloon’s descent.

3. The boy could have been found eating Cheetos, or napping or playing video games somewhere else that was significantly not inside the balloon itself.

The first result would have been a heartwarming conclusion to a frightful situation. The second story would have been a tragedy requiring delicate handling. The third would — or at least should be — something of an embarrassment to the news outlets giving it blanket national coverage for more than an hour.

It turned out that, no, there was no boy in the balloon, and that specific insanity belonged to a man named Richard Heene, a stuntman/handyman/inventor/reality television pseudo-star who had appeared on “Wife Swap” and decided he wanted more fame for himself and his family than just that. So he lost the tether on his invented balloon, told police and the media that his son Falcon was in it and next thing you knew, people like me were wrapping up their workday terrified that a small boy was going to fall out of a balloon shaped like a flying saucer. I really was worried at the time. You would have been too.

Falcon Heene
Falcon Heene, 6, outside his family’s home in Fort Collins, Colo., after he was found hiding in a box in a space above the garage on Oct. 15, 2009.David Zalubowski / AP file NBC news: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/parents-convicted-balloon-boy-hoax-pardoned-colorado-governor-n1252343
  • That was it. The whole story… what a let-down.
    • The incident temporarily shut down Denver International Airport and prompted local authorities and the National Guard to deploy military helicopters on a rescue search that cost at least $14,500.
    • US networks devoted hours of coverage to the drama showing footage of emergency services and two National Guard helicopters deployed to save the child as an enormous balloon floated away.
    • When the balloon landed in a field, there was no sign of him and authorities feared for his safety.
      • I remember that moment. Everyone watching was like “OH GOD HE FELL OUT!!”
    • Falcon Heene (THE Balloon Boy) was later discovered unharmed, hiding in the attic of his family’s home in Fort Collins, about 60 miles north of Denver.
    • The family were being interviewed on national TV show Larry King Live by prominent journalist Wolf Blitzer when the young boy appeared to out his parents’ hoax.
    • When asked why he was hiding at home, he said to his father: “You guys said that, um, we did this for the show.”
    • Following the revelation that it was staged, police said the house of Richard and Mayumi Heene was searched for evidence that the family was hoping to use the incident to obtain a lucrative contract for a television reality show.
    • “The plan was to create a situation where it appeared Falcon was in the craft and that his life was in jeopardy in order to gain a lot of publicity with the ultimate goal of gaining some notoriety and perhaps furthering their careers by gaining a contract for a reality TV show,” Colorado sheriff Jim Alderden said at the time.
    • Police had also found that the balloon was extremely flimsy, made of plywood and cardboard, and held together with “string and duct tape”.
  • I’m not surprised people like my wife don’t remember the story because it was such a disappointing ending.
    • A few jokes were made on late-night shows and a few obscure references were made for a few years to come on shows like Netflix’s LOVE, but not much else came from it.
    • The nation was captivated by the plight of these poor people and their poor boy alone and scared in a balloon floating over several different states. If he survived we were ready to celebrate him… if he didn’t survive we were all ready to memorialize him and console his family. Those were the outcomes the nation was ready to react to… and then we all found out that we were all lied to.
      • So on that Thursday October 15th back in 2009 we went back to work (school work for kids like me) and forgot the whole thing ever happened.
    • Until news broke that his parents were going to jail for it…
Richard and Mayumi Heene walk out of the courtroom after their sentencing hearing in Fort Collins, Colo., on Dec. 23, 2009. – NBC news: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/parents-convicted-balloon-boy-hoax-pardoned-colorado-governor-n1252343
  • Authorities said the false report was a publicity stunt to land a reality television show for the Heene family.
    • Richard Heene (the dad that was on Wife Swap) pleaded guilty for attempting to influence a public servant and was sentenced to 90 days in jail, while Mayumi Heene pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for filing a false report and was sentenced to 20 days in jail.
    • NBC News previously reported that the couple’s three sons knew of the hoax at the time but were not charged because they were minors.
    • At the time of the incident, Richard said the family pleaded guilty to protect his wife, who was a Japanese citizen at risk of deportation.
    • When it was all said and done, the parents served jail time and had those nasty criminal records. But one of the biggest factors was that the entire nation (and a bit of international news coverage) lead to the parents being outcasts from society.

In December of 2020, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis pardoned a couple who were convicted of staging a hoax that captivated the nation more than a decade ago.

Eleven years after the debacle, Polis, who pardoned or commuted the sentences of 20 other people, said the family had “paid the price in the eyes of the public.”

“We are all ready to move past the spectacle from a decade ago that wasted the precious time and resources of law enforcement officials and the general public,” Polis said in a statement on Wednesday. “It’s time for all of us to move on.”

Image: Richard Heene holds his son Falcon Heene, 6.
Richard Heene holds his son Falcon Heene, 6, at home in Fort Collins, Colo. on Oct. 15, 2009.Cyrus McCrimmon / Denver Post via Getty Images

David Lane, the attorney who helped the family apply for a pardon, said that after more than a decade, the “balloonacy was finally over,” the Denver Post reported.

Lane did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Richard told the Denver Post that he was excited the governor wiped his slate clean. “This is like a new launch,” he said. “I’m flying high.”

Mr Heene served a month in jail and Mrs Heene was jailed for 20 days for filing a false report. They were also ordered to pay $36,000 (£26,000).

  • That was the whole story. A barely-famous douchey reality TV guy and his wife lead the entire nation to think their son was in danger.
    • It cost the taxpayers money and wasted everyone’s time. It is something most of us want to forget…
    • LOL and that’s why I am delighted to remind all of you of the story.
    • LOL Thanks for listening Who’d a Thunkers!

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