9/11 is by far one of the darkest chapters in the history of mankind. And now, ahead of its 25th anniversary, the story of a woman who almost lost her life in the Twin Towers has surfaced online.
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Add BollywoodShaadis on GoogleThe morning of September 11, 2001, marked the darkest chapter for thousands of families who lost their loved ones in the tragic attack. One of the people present inside the building when the first plane hit was Sara Botkin. The then-24-year-old was at the mall beneath the World Trade Center when she stopped for a minute to buy a Mariah Carey CD before starting her day as a temp at an insurance brokerage firm.
However, little did Sara Botkin know that one decision would save her life. Now, 25 years later, she has reflected on what happened on that ill-fated morning and how she managed to escape the fatal attack.
Sara Botkin was waiting for the elevator when she first got the news that the North Tower had been struck. She managed to escape the building before the South Tower was struck by the second plane and left for Queens. Two months later, she fled NYC and moved back to Pittsburgh, where she married her boyfriend. Now, in a conversation with PEOPLE, Sara has reflected on the experience, calling it a "real turning point" in her life.
For those who are not aware, the 9/11 attack claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people, including 176 employees from Sara Botkin's company, the Aon Corporation. Now, 25 years later, Sara owns and runs Botkin Family Wealth Management and shares three children with her now-husband, Ovi, who proposed to her just two weeks after the national tragedy. While the incident lives as a dark chapter, Sara is grateful to have survived.
However, every September, she allows the grief to flow back in, as she watches footage of the towers falling and listens to the desperate 9/11 calls placed that day from the fire-ravaged buildings before some people jumped to their deaths. She said:
"For me, 9/11 is a memory, but for so many other people, it's a nightmare that they haven't been able to wake up from because they lost people who they loved."
Sara Botkin recalled what happened that fall morning and said it was like any other day for her, and the most pressing thing on her mind was picking up a copy of the Glitter soundtrack, which was being released that day. She said she bought the copy at the Sam Goody Store in the mall that connected the Twin Towers before work. However, she never got a chance to reach the 105th floor. She was quoted as saying:
"I was standing in line for the elevator, holding my new Glitter CD, when the first plane hit. There were security guards saying, 'Stay in the building. Our building is secure. There's a fire in Tower 1.' I remember they said, 'F this,' and they left. So I thought, 'All right, I'm going to leave, too.' And when I got outside, that's when I looked up and saw that hole."
However, when she got outside, Sara Botkin still didn't realize the severity of the situation. She recalled that, from her perspective, the plane looked small, and she wondered: had a flight lesson gone awry? Nonetheless, despite the questions, her main focus was to get out of there. Sara soon jumped on the subway and traveled to Grand Central, from where she called her dad's office. In that moment, she realized how desperately her family was trying to reach her. She said:
"The receptionist answered. And when I asked for my father, she just started yelling, 'It's her, it's Sara. Sara's on the phone'. And I was thinking, 'Huh. So everybody was waiting to hear from me.'"
Sara Botkin's father told her to head straight home to Queens and tell him when she arrived. On the aboveground subway from Manhattan to Queens, Sara realized it was no small plane crash that had caused such disruption. She recalled how it was the first time she saw "both towers engulfed in flames." But only when she got home did she realize how dire the situation was.
Sara Botkin played messages on her answering machine and heard her mom call repeatedly, tearfully begging her to call back. She recalled, "I had all these horrible messages from my mom just crying, 'Please, Sara, please, please call me. Please let me know you're all right.'" The entire situation became clear when Sara finally spoke with her mother, who told her that her tower had collapsed. Sara shared that she had started the temp job for Aon in July 2001 to cover an employee on maternity leave.
Sara, in the same conversation, recalled that the first time she left her apartment after the 9/11 tragedy was on the following Sunday. She revealed she went with her choir to sing at The Plaza Hotel, where a communication center had been set up for families of the employees missing from Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm housed on the top floors of the North Tower.
For those who are not aware, a total of 658 employees from that organization died in the ill-fated attack. She recalled how they sang God Be In My Head. However, it didn't comfort anyone; rather, it just made everyone cry harder. While the world seemed to be falling apart with the attack and the news that anthrax was being mailed in anonymous letters in the weeks after, Sara Botkin felt "an intense longing" for home.
The urge grew even stronger when her then-boyfriend, Ovi, was willing to move to Pittsburgh with her. He thought his girlfriend had died in the attack, and it was only after Sara Botkin's mother called him that he found out the truth. Stricken by relief and love for Sara, Ovi got down on one knee two weekends later, when he saw her, and by December 8, 2001, the couple had tied the knot.
25 years later, Sara Botkin is happily married to Ovi and still has the CD that helped save her life. However, she rarely listens to it. Nonetheless, a few days after the attacks, Mariah Carey sent her a signed CD and photo after she learned about Sara's story. She revealed how she thought that her life would never be the same and admitted that despite the tragedy it "went sort of back to normal."
Sara Botkin's story was one of the few happy endings that came after the dark clouds of 9/11. For those who don't know Sara, she is a music graduate from the University of Virginia. She moved to NYC, where she secured a range of gigs, from singing with the Lincoln Center's National Chorale to dressing up as an elf and crooning holiday classics in office lobbies. Like many artists, then and now, she found outside work to sustain herself, mostly through temping.
What are your thoughts on Sara Botkin's 9/11 story? Let us know.
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