As a writer and editor for UC Riverside’s School of Medicine, Erika Klein chronicles students and faculty members’ efforts to reach new heights in public health.

In her spare time, Klein literally reaches for the skies as an accomplished hang glider pilot who teaches the sport to others and has built up a substantial social media presence. She has thousands of followers on Tik Tok and Instagram and has racked up 27 million views on Facebook with one of her videos.

“It’s just this really unique thing,” she said of hang gliding. “You feel like you’re a bird or a superhero because there’s literally nothing between you and the ground.”

She’s flown all over the country and traveled as far as Japan to hang glide. Most recently, Klein competed in a week-long racing competition in Mexico in February.

Klein, 32, became captivated by the sport at a young age. At 10, she saw a picture of a red hang glider soaring over some mountains in a book and begged her parents to let her fly one.

They told her no, but she continued asking for years with them telling her she would have to wait until she was 18. But after she completed a school project about hang gliding in Southern California, where she grew up, they relented and let her go on a tandem flight with an instructor when she was 16.

The flight off a mountain in Sylmar lived up to her expectations. She described it as floating in the sky with an unobstructed view right below.

“Hang gliding is not like falling,” she said. “It’s kind of like the feeling of riding a bike through the air, very smooth and gentle.”

She continued training for a full year at Dockweiler Beach in Playa Del Rey — more than typical as she was under 18 —  before taking her first solo mountain flight. That extended training period allowed Klein to become skilled at dune soaring or low altitude beach flying, her favorite type of hang gliding.

“I like floating or hovering just five or ten feet off of a sand dune,” she said. “To me it feels more like flying than anything else.”

Launching and landing are the most important skills one must learn to hang glide with pilots steering in the air by shifting their weight, Klein said. She said she doesn’t feel unsafe because she’s securely hooked into a strong harness that can support many times her weight.

Klein demonstrates her skills with photos and videos of her flying on her social media accounts, which she started to highlight the ease of hang gliding and help attract more people to the declining sport. One popular Tik Tok video with more than 15 million views has her getting into her hang glider with a gymnastic flip before launching.

@erikajklein Flip & fly hang gliding 🤸🏻‍♀️ #hanggliding #gymnastics #takeoff #femalepilot #lowflying ♬ Travelling - Mapa

As a hang glider, Klein has been able to enjoy amazing views all over the country and in different parts of the world. One of her favorites was Yosemite National Park where she launched off Glacier Point and had spectacular views of Half Dome.

In late February, Klein took on a new challenge when she competed in the El Peñon Classic Race, a week-long hang gliding competition near the town of Valle de Bravo in Mexico.

Competitors took off from the same launch point at a designated time, flying for two to three hours each day to different locations, racing for the best time.

Hang gliding doesn’t usually take much physical effort, but the consecutive long competition days and challenging weather conditions took a toll, Klein said.

“I’ve never been more physically tired — or in in better shape — in my life,” she said.

Klein’s passion for hang gliding is what led her to writing and later UCR. Her very first interview for a writing project was with a hang glider pilot and she spent four years as communications manager for the U.S. Hang Gliding & Paragliding Association writing about the sport.

But Klein has also had an interest in public health and focused on the topic as a research fellow at the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a journalism graduate student at the University of Southern California. She freelanced for several publications before jumping at the opportunity to join UCR’s School of Medicine last April.

“Working at the School of Medicine has brought together my interests in learning and informing others about health topics and research while promoting the school’s work to help improve care and medical outcomes in the region,” Klein said. “I've enjoyed talking to everyone from students to standardized patients to donors to faculty, learning what brought them to UCR and using my articles to share their incredible dedication to the community.”

Find out more about Klein's hang gliding exploits on her Tik Tok and Instagram accounts.