Many people go head over heels for Rotary, but 59-year-old daredevil Brad Robinson has taken this concept to new heights.

Robinson’s club, the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills, Calif., USA, hosted a Family Day at the Circus fundraiser to benefit Habitat for Humanity. The event took place at L.A. stuntman Richie Gaona’s Flying Trapeze School, the facility where Robinson regularly practices daring moves, such as a “double” – two somersaults from a trapeze through the air to a catcher.

Gaona trains clients from celebrities to retirees in his backyard school, where he also has a high wire and trampoline.

Through sponsorships and ticket sales, the club raised $2,500, not to mention a few eyebrows – especially when Rotarians closed their eyes and dove into their first swings on the trapeze. The event was such a success, Robinson says the club plans to organize another one in 2008.

“I admired those who also had a fear of heights but who wanted to try this,” says Robinson, who wowed the crowd with a few tricks and catches with his wife, Catherine.

Though joining a Rotary club and learning high-flying stunts don’t seem anything alike, Robinson, who now serves as an assistant district governor for International Service, says the camaraderie in Rotary and trapeze school isn’t that different.

When flying, “you have to have trust in the people catching you, advising you, holding up your safety lines, and helping you on the take-off board,” says Robinson, adding that in Rotary, club members support each other in similar, yet sometimes less obvious, ways.