9/11 Survivor describes her escape from the 95th floor

There are moments in life that can shape us profoundly, such as a divorce, becoming a parent, a critical illness, or a near-death experience. It’s those moments that invite us to stop, pay attention, and take stock of our life, its meaning, and purpose.

Today, I have the honor of speaking to Michaela Cruz, a survivor of the 9/11 attacks. A couple of years ago, I’ve seen a documentary from that particular day and stumbled across her story, which really captivated me, and for whatever reason, I looked up her profile on LinkedIn and instantly connected with her.

So two years later, as I was planning a trip to New York City, her story randomly popped up in my head again, and I don’t know why, but I took a chance and asked her if she would be down to meet up for a video about her story, and to my surprise, she agreed.

I am originally from New York City, and my background was finance. And so my background consisted of growing up in New York City, learning finance when I was a teenager, and that actually led me to having a job that was located in the World Trade Center.

“Can you share your experience of what happened on 9/11 and where you were at that time very quickly?”

Sure. So as many people know, that day had to be one of the most beautiful days in September in New York City. The sun was shining, it was nice and warm, and so I took the elevator to my floor, which is the 95th floor of the World Trade Center Tower Two. When I got up to the elevator, I went to my desk, put my briefcase and purse down, and a guy that I was dating called me and he said,

“How was your work day going?”

And I broke up with him a couple weeks before, so I said,

“I’m… it’s fine. I don’t want to talk. I have to go.”

As soon as I hung up the phone, I heard the roar of an airplane engine and then a boom, and then someone said,

“A plane just hit Tower One!”

“This just in, you were looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story.”

I didn’t know what to do. I remember grabbing my purse, grabbing my briefcase, and running towards the stairs. My co-worker Laurie, who I never spoke to, she was working on the other side of the floor, she grabbed me, she pulled me into the elevator. She said,

“You’re not taking the stairs.”

And I said,

“But in an emergency, you take the stairs.”

She said,

“No, come with me in the elevator.”

We descended to the 90th floor, and that’s where the legal offices and everybody was. It was pandemonium, it was people… people were crying, people were screaming, and only one other person came into the elevator with us. The 78th floor was a main elevator bank of Tower Two, so that’s where everybody ran towards the main elevator. Hundreds of people were pushing and shoving into these elevators, and I remember one person saying,

“There’s no more people, you can’t come in, you can’t come in.”

And usually the descent from the 78th floor to the lobby, it would normally feel quick. It didn’t feel like it was forever, but this time in that elevator, people were crying, people were shaking. I was shaking. We got to the lobby. My co-worker Laurie ran for Liberty Street, the other side of the World Trade Center. I walked the other way, and as soon as I got to the lobby, I saw one of my co-workers go into the elevator. I pulled her out and I said,

“Don’t go in there.”

Port Authority… Port Authority announced that there was nothing wrong with Tower Two, so everybody should be going back to work. That’s what she heard, and that’s why she walked into the elevator, and I pulled her out. I said,

“Don’t… don’t go in.”

I walked out of the lobby, and that’s when the second plane went into Tower Two. So I saw something going into the, uh, going into the building, and then someone knocked me to the ground because everybody just started screaming, running. And I had… and my co-worker Andrew was with me, and he said,

“Let’s go to South Street Seaport, that’s the only place that we could find that’s safe.”

Whenever I saw people on the street, a lot of them were crying, a lot of them were bloody. Like, some of the people… um, I actually saw some people jump from the higher floor, so in my mind I’m thinking, that could have been a co-worker. So walking, I thought, did I die too? I didn’t realize… I didn’t know if I was dead or alive actually. I didn’t… I couldn’t see the difference between death and living at that point, so I was like a zombie pretty much, just walking towards the South Street Seaport.

And then all of a sudden, I heard… we heard another boom. The tower began to collapse. People started running towards the water because the way that it was collapsing, it looked like it was going to collapse on us even though it was like a few blocks away. But obviously it did not fall, but the debris just came. I was covered in silver debris. I couldn’t breathe, it was just… something was in my throat.

That day just… I remember that day so vividly because it’s so poignant in my life, and because I live here again, all the memories are starting to come back. So that was the day. When I came to my mother’s house, she came home 15 minutes later. My whole family thought I was dead. Nobody could get in touch with me. My brother was actually planning my funeral because he thought that I was dead. Yeah, yeah, he didn’t know. He saw the second plane collapse… the second tower collapsed, and he was like,

“I have to plan her funeral.”

So both yoga and meditation, the peace that I found within myself helped me deal with the trauma, the post-trauma that came from 9/11. Because every time I would hear something, every time I would smell something, it would trigger, like, burning rubber, it would just give me a sense of,

“Oh my gosh, like, it’s happening again.”

Yeah, but meditation, keeping me in the present moment, that actually helped me through every single time that I was dealing with the traumatic event or having these traumatic thoughts. So that was… it was helpful.

“Okay, so meditation was basically the solution to you?”

“Yes, because it was keeping my mind in the present, and even though I know that happened, I’m safe right now.”

“Okay, it’s a little strange for you walking past what you tell us once stood right? I can’t imagine.”

Yes, um, going to the memorial is something I don’t do unless there’s someone in my family who’s visiting from out of state or out of the country. They want to come because they want to see basically what I went through, they want to get a glimpse. They want to feel at least what I felt with my friends, and you know, and it’s painful because I show them the names of my friends who passed away, and that is very… that’s very painful for me because these people, I went skiing with them, these people I hung out with them after work, they were my good friends, and to see them gone within a second, and then your life just changes.

Um, so I do… I won’t go to the Freedom Tower. My best friend is also a 9/11 survivor, and she won’t go either. We just have a thing where we know that the World Trade Center was there, that was our workplace. The Freedom Tower is just another building, but the memorial is what’s most important to us.

The one thing that I remember saying to myself after 9/11 is that not one opportunity that was going to come at me, I was not going to open that door. So if I was offered to start training people on how to sell to real estate agents, in doing that I realized, wait a minute, I can make a business out of speaking to people, and that’s how I became a keynote speaker. A lot of my speeches were about 9/11, but it was also about empowerment and living in the moment. And um, that actually prompted me to start writing. And so the writing came about with the co-author of my book saying,

“Let’s… we should write a book about your experience,”

and that’s how that came about.

The yoga teaching, I just wanted to give myself… I wanted to provide a service to others with something that I was knowledgeable about, and that’s how teaching yoga came into play, because I’ve been practicing for so long. I wanted to share my knowledge with others, and in my darkest moments, I found that teaching yoga takes everything away from my own hurt and using my ability to share my knowledge with others as a gift.

My message is that in our lives at some point, we can experience our own 9/11. We can experience so much loss in our lives. It could be a loss of a job, loss of a loved one, loss of something, and you feel so dead inside. It happens to all of us, and we never are alone in our experiences. There is always someone out there who at least can understand what you’re going through. And that is the message, that we are never ever truly alone in our thoughts, in our actions, in how we feel about ourselves, there’s always someone who’s also feeling that same way.