Genelle Guzman-McMillan, the last person pulled alive from the rubble of the World Trade Center on 9/11, is once again sharing her story of survival and faith - this week at a remembrance ceremony in Florida, and soon on screen in a new Lifetime film.
Guzman-McMillan was working on the 64th floor of the North Tower when the first plane struck. She made it down to the 13th floor before the building collapsed, trapping her beneath concrete and steel for 27 hours. "I was just, like, preparing myself to die," she told Bay News 9 during a remembrance event in Palm Harbor this week.
Pinned and unable to move anything but her left arm, Guzman-McMillan says she began praying, recalling faith her mother had tried to pass down to her years earlier. In the darkness, she says she felt a hand take hold of hers. "I felt a hand hold me, call me by my name, told me his name, and his name Paul, and he kept holding me," she said, "until the rescuer came and got me out."
When she later tried to find Paul to thank him, no rescue worker by that name could be identified - leading her to believe she'd been held by an angel in her darkest hour.
Guzman-McMillan wrote about the experience in her memoir, "Angel in the Rubble," now adapted into a Lifetime film starring Sherri Shepherd. She continues speaking publicly each September, saying it's her responsibility to keep telling the story so future generations understand both the tragedy and what carried her through it.
"We are Americans, and we are never going to give up," she said.
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