ORLANDO, FL — Nancy Rosado keeps an old NYPD cap in a package at her Orlando home, and she can reach it in minutes. The hat was mailed back to her after she lost it during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and debris still clings to it.
Rosado said the item carries memories she has never fully shaken. The former New York Police Department sergeant described the day in painful detail, saying the sights and sounds remain vivid more than two decades later.
“I have no words for it,” she said. “It’s just a little heartbreaking.”
How Rosado first saw the World Trade Center attack unfold
Rosado was working with the NYPD’s Early Intervention Unit and was with a support group not far from the World Trade Center when people around her began staring upward and pointing. She said one person told her it might have been a small plane or helicopter that hit the building.
When she reached the corner and looked up, she saw a deep wound in the tower that appeared, in her words, almost like a smile. Flames were visible, but she remembers that they seemed to move downward rather than rise. The image stayed with her because it made clear something far worse than a routine accident had happened.
Her memory of that moment is tied to the confusion on the street and the sudden realization that the day had become an emergency unlike anything New Yorkers had seen before.
What she saw on the streets as the towers burned
Rosado said the street scene quickly turned chaotic. She remembers debris and paper falling from the building, but as she moved closer, she understood that some of what was coming down was not paper at all. She said she saw people in the collapse of the attack’s aftermath.
She described pushing people away from the area as the danger grew. Rosado also recalled spotting a police radio on the ground and hearing officers pleading for help over the air.
Those voices, she said, were some of the most haunting parts of the day. Officers called out from inside the building and from nearby locations, sometimes giving their floor, only for the transmission to go silent. Rosado said that silence signaled that the floor they mentioned no longer existed.
Years of trauma, anger and delayed care after Sept. 11
Rosado said the attacks did not end when the smoke cleared. She believes the events of that day changed the city and left lasting harm on first responders who were exposed to the chaos and loss.
At the time, she was focused on helping other people deal with trauma, which left little room to process her own reaction. Rosado said she later developed a bad temper, was diagnosed with skin cancer and eventually spent seven years seeing a psychiatrist.
She said she did not begin focusing on her own mental health until months after the attacks. Even then, she struggled to separate her own pain from the stories of the people she was trying to help. “I was not realizing what was happening to me,” she said, explaining that she kept taking on everyone else’s experiences.
Why Rosado says the memory still feels immediate
Rosado said the passage of time has not dulled the memory. “For me, it feels like yesterday,” she said, describing the attack as something that remains close to the surface in daily life.
She said remembering Sept. 11 matters because firsthand accounts help preserve history in a way statistics and timelines cannot. In her view, people who were there carry details that should not be forgotten, especially the stories of those who tried to save others.
Rosado said the country should keep returning to those accounts and to the people who stepped into danger. “We must never forget what happened,” she said. “We must never forget the people who were willing to put their lives out there to possibly save other people.”
Rosado’s work now focuses on trauma support and outreach
Rosado is now an activist and outreach consultant for UCF Restores, an initiative that helps first responders receive treatment for trauma-related needs. Her current work keeps her connected to the people whose struggles often remain hidden long after emergencies end.
She has also been selected to serve on the Pulse Memorial Advisory Committee. That role adds another layer to her public service in Central Florida, where she continues to work with communities affected by loss and traumatic events.
Her life in Orlando is far from the streets of lower Manhattan, but she said the events of Sept. 11 still shape how she understands her work. The old cap in her home remains a physical reminder of the day that changed her life and the lives of so many others.
