You could say that 18-year-old Sid Pearl has a typical young person’s job: He delivers newspapers in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. What’s unusual about Sid’s job is that he delivers the papers—as well as U.S. mail—by jumping out of a moving boat!
On the shores of Lake Geneva is a summer resort town that bears the same name. About 60 of the houses surrounding the lake have their newspapers and mail delivered by boat during the summer. To make deliveries, mail jumpers like Sid leap from the boat to the dock, run to the mailbox to make their delivery, then jump back onboard. But they don’t always stick the landing—in his three years as a mail jumper, Sid has fallen in the lake nine times.