As a teenager, Candi Kubeck was captivated by the airplanes that flew over her California home. She wanted to fly, just like her grandfather and uncles had done in World War I and Vietnam.
Her love led her to challenge Air Force cadets to a flying contest and to cross picket lines to work for now-defunct Eastern Airlines.Her favorite TV show was "Wings."
Kubeck, believed to be the first woman commercial jetliner captain to die in a U.S. crash, was among 109 people killed Saturday when her ValuJet plane nose-dived into the Florida Everglades.
But she didn't love flying enough to take chances, her husband said Monday. "She would have everything checked out," said Roger Kubeck.
Roger Kubeck, himself a pilot for America West Airlines, agreed to be interviewed by The Associated Press because "I don't want her to be a statistic."
Candi Kubeck, 35, often saw military planes flying over her childhood home near San Diego, her husband said. She was close to her grandfather, who flew biplanes during World War I.
"She was a pilot, that's all there was to it," said Roger Kubeck, 38. "She was not a girl pilot. She thought of herself as one of the boys."
Candi Kubeck graduated from Metropolitan State College of Denver, where she studied aviation and competed on a flight team that challenged the nearby Air Force Academy team to a flyoff, said her father, Hugh Chamberlin.
She began as an instructor pilot at small airfields and working at various commuter and freight airlines based in California and Arizona. Her career included a stint as an air traffic controller at El Paso International Airport.
In 1989, Candi Kubeck crossed the picket lines at Eastern Airlines, a move that put her in a major airline cockpit for the first time but earned her the lasting enmity of some of her fellow pilots.
Having been turned down at American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United, Candi Kubeck saw the Eastern job as her big break, her husband said.
"She'd taken a lot of flak for her crossing the line, but I'll tell you what, she loved that job," he said. She became a first officer in Eastern's biggest plane, the Airbus 300, he said.
She left Eastern when it closed in 1991. When ValuJet started in 1993, she was hired immediately.
Pam Mitchell of the International Society of Women Airline Pilots said she believes it was the first U.S. commercial crash with a female captain. A female co-pilot died when a United Airlines jetliner crashed near Colorado Springs, Colo., killing 25 people on March 3, 1991.