by Jess McCuan   .   photos by Brent Fleury

A sign on the back of her Acura reads: “A woman’s place is in the cockpit.” Driving behind her, you’d probably guess she is a pilot. But you might be surprised to learn that this particular vehicle (which also contains a .38 Special pistol, just for safety) belongs to a mild-mannered rheumatologist, Jill Vargo, who spends her days at the Asheville Arthritis and Osteoporosis Center helping people with their aching joints. By day, Dr. Vargo’s bedside manner couldn’t be gentler, explaining diseases like lupus and gout to her patients, many of them elderly. In her free time, though, she is a thrill-seeking world traveler, having kissed a giraffe in Nairobi, climbed pyramids in Egypt and flown her sleek single-engine plane to locations all over the country.

When people find out about Dr. Vargo’s secret life in the air, they blurt out the strangest questions. “My patients have asked me: ‘Are you really strong enough to fly an airplane?’” says Vargo, a petite 50-year-old who has been flying for ten years. She is multi-instrument rated, which means that, in addition to flying smaller single-engine planes like Cessnas, she can fly a much larger twin-engine aircraft. She often flies to medical conferences in her single-engine Cirrus, equipped with a parachute for the plane itself. For fun, she might fly to the South Carolina beach or the Bahamas. On one trip, she rescued two Westies, Daphne and Wesley, from a Georgia family that was planning to take them to an Atlanta pound. Now the dogs are her frequent flying companions and wear doggie seat belts in the plane’s back seat. Another highlight was landing at a naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, and touring the World War II carrier ship the Enterprise CV-65.

Given her family history, Vargo was destined to become a dentist. Her dad, a dentist who’s also a pilot, taught her how to fly at a small rural airstrip near their home in Oak Hill, West Virginia. Her two twin brothers are also dentists. Vargo knew early on that she was interested in medicine but didn’t want to fix teeth for a living. She met her husband, psychologist Tony Sciara, while taking flying lessons from instructor Fred Bechtoldt at the Asheville airport, and now the tail numbers on their Cirrus include both of their initials and their wedding date. Next up, the couple has made a down payment on a small jet. “I told her she should have married a surgeon,” Tony jokes.