The people waiting their turn to rappel down the 17-story Highline Apartments building had strict instructions: Don’t come up to the roof until we come get you.

Most of the group, assembled there for a fundraiser, seemed content to hang back in the designated waiting area half a flight of stairs below the roof, where they’d eventually step over the edge into the blue sky high above downtown Omaha.

All but one person, actually. Sister Stephanie Matcha, age 81. The octogenarian nun who does her own stunts, from running 5K races to rocking “Beer Barrel Polka” on xylophone, was ready.

She kept bouncing up and down the stairs, the hardware on her rappelling harness clinking, to ask what was taking so long. After one trip up, someone half-jokingly asked her to say a prayer. She paused at the

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