“The cameraman never dies.”

Carson Philbin thought he was invincible, and three weeks before his death, he said so in an Instagram post about his most recent adventures. He had a decade of stunts on his SD card, most done while one hand was busy recording.

But on Jan. 13, the day after his 24th birthday, the Charlotte YouTuber took a fatal plunge from a cliff into Hawaii’s waters below.

Bystanders near Ka’u’s South Point hoist area rescued three of Philbin’s friends from the “rough ocean conditions,” Hawaii police said. Fishermen and firefighters eventually found Philbin, but doctors at Hilo Medical Center pronounced him dead, according to a news release.

In July, a 53-year-old man died at the same location, and in 2018, a 23-year-old man didn’t survive the dive, police said.

The South Point area, though a popular spot listed on several social media and tourist websites, is “not safe for jumping or diving,” police said. But Philbin had known his way around the area near his grandparents’ home since he was 9, friends recalled.

As the news about his death broke, friends waited for a punchline that never came. The Charlotte native had scaled bridges, peaked uptown’s skyline and routinely plummeted from hundreds of feet above the ground.

“Somebody does that enough times, you truly believe they’re invincible,” said Jackson Dumas, who met Philbin in Ms. White’s fourth-grade class at Polo Ridge Elementary School.

Finding a love recording and cameras

Philbin and Dumas discovered Flip video cameras as 10-year-olds, and by the time they were high schoolers at Ardrey Kell, they were their classmates’ go-to cameramen.

A promotional video to get students to donate canned goods for a food drive? Sure.

A Christmas Eve shoot requiring him to hang half his body outside his Prius’ window? Why not?

A Hail Mary rap video attempting to get his friend into Harvard after a deferral? Ok, but get ready for it to go viral.

Philbin, stationed behind the camera, showed Ethan Kim how to harness a confidence he didn’t know he had while rapping about cans of rolling Campbell’s soup. By the time they were crafting another video pleading Harvard to admit Kim — a saga The Charlotte Observer covered in 2020 — a lasting bond had formed.

For Philbin, everything started with a leap of faith, Kim said. His Hawaii jump was the leap that ended everything.

Who was Carson Philbin?

Philbin was a textbook “yes man” with lenses for eyes and motors for legs, his old friend Dumas said.

Videos of high school track meets take up the first slots on Philbin’s YouTube channel, which now has more than 6,000 followers. The laps kept him in shape and gave him something to record. They also kept him intertwined with Elliott Schultz, whom he met at Jay M. Robinson Middle School’s tryouts.

Schultz, in sixth grade at the time, didn’t know Philbin, but he automatically hated the “rockstar, daredevil heartthrob” running next to him. That hostility lifted when Philbin ran over, quick to gush over Elliott’s time. In that moment, the two formed a friendship that would soon transcend rival high schools.

Philbin donned purple and black for Ardrey Kell as Schultz wore Providence High School’s gold and black. Running and film kept them together through Philbin’s college endeavors at the University of South Carolina and, eventually, Savannah College of Art and Design.

“Dude had a heart for adventure and people,” Schultz said. “And he wasn’t a rookie cliff jumper, either.”

A recent gig as the producer for popular YouTuber SocksIRL capitalized on Philbin’s permanent Quest Mode and took him to the world’s most isolated hotels.

Whether he knew it or not, his final months were spent checking off trips that would appear on most people’s bucket lists, said Ryan Kendall, who first met a GoPro-holding Philbin in high school.

Shannon Stone, an elementary school classmate and lifelong friend, struggled to remember Philbin’s long trek list, but she did remember their countless conversations — and his relentlessly introspective questions.

“What’s your biggest insecurity?” he’d ask someone he just met at a party. “And what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

While some questions admittedly may have been a tee-up to launch into one of his tales, Stone has yet to meet another person who was as fixated on learning as much as he could about who surrounded him.

The candelabra tattoo Philbin got months ago embodied another motto. One candle flickers out as the middle flame burns bright and the third remains untouched.

It’s a reminder to not dwell on the past nor the future, but to live in the moment, she said. She now has the same symbol, though scaled down to be a less painful tattooing experience, on her arm.

“No harm could come to him, as long as he was living his life to his fullest,” Stone said.

Memorial service, run for Carson Philbin

Everyone is welcome to light their own candles — symbolic or literal — at a vigil and run for Philbin at McAlpine Creek Park at 8 a.m. Saturday. A 1 p.m. memorial service at Mercy Church and a 3:30 p.m. celebration of life at Hilton Garden Inn will follow.