As I write this, we don’t know if the story of the Mylar balloon that went sailing over Colorado, attracting wall-to-wall TV news coverage, was tragic or not. We don’t know if it was real or a hoax, if six-year-old Falcon Heene was ever in the balloon. But it is undoubtedly a strange story. And, it turns out, the Heene family has been in the media spotlight not long ago.
In a season-five episode of ABC’s Wife Swap, the Heene family, described as a thrill seeking family of stormchasers (the father hosts a series of “Psyience Detectives” videos), swapped parenting duties with a pair of safety-fixated parents.
