How Lauren Sánchez Became a Pilot at 40 (Exclusive) ArticlePure

In mid-August, when Lauren Sánchez posted an Instagram video of herself flying a helicopter while her 23-year-old son Nikko Gonzales — and pal Orlando Bloom — prepared to parachute out of it, she called herself a “helicopter mom.”

She meant that in the most literal sense.

The philanthropist and Vice Chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, 54, who is about to release her first children’s book, learned to fly when she was 40 — and says she has loved every second of it since.

“I was always around aviation,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue of her childhood in Albuquerque, where her parents owned a flight school. But she went the journalist route instead, becoming a local news anchor and a correspondent at places like KTLA and Extra.

“One day I told my dad, ‘I think I want to learn to fly,’ ” Sánchez recalls, joking, “It may have been the best day of his life.”

But just because she grew up around pilots, doesn’t mean learning how to do it herself was simple.

“I was 40 years old when this happened,” the mom of three says. “My dad helped me find an instructor in California, and I remember the instructor saying, ‘Your dad’s a pilot, your mom’s a pilot. You must know a lot about aircraft.’ And I said, ‘The only thing I know is to stay away from the propeller.’ ”

“He goes, ‘OK, we have a lot of work to do here…’ ” she adds.

Eventually, she got her license, and soon after that, she began Black Ops Aviation, an aerial filming company.

“It was an incredible experience because I think only 3% of helicopter pilots were women at the time,” Sánchez says. “Now I think it’s about 6%.”

For more on Lauren Sánchez’s life now and her quiet moments with fiancé Jeff Bezos, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe.

Through her own story, Sánchez hopes to inspire more women to climb into the cockpit.

“I just think that growing up, women don’t see a lot of female aviators,” she says, “And so I hope women might see me as a pilot and say, ‘Hey, I want to do that!’ It’s really an incredible experience, and I love it.”

Flying also inspired her first children’s book, The Fly Who Flew to Space, which is coming out Sept. 10. The story follows the tale of Flynn the fly, who gets caught in the cockpit of a rocket ship and then goes on a wild adventure through space.

As far as getting over any fears she might have before climbing into a cockpit, well, she has her past to thank for that.

“When you’re so used to failing at things, you become resilient,” she says of living with dyslexia, which was a real struggle when she was a child. “Once you get through that nothing can stop you.”

She continues, “I think a lot of times people want to put you in a box, and we don’t thrive in boxes. So that’s really what life is about: Trying new things.”