Twenty-five years after 9/11, Debbie St John still cannot quite believe what Stefan Horlacher did on the day that transformed history – and her life – forever. Fighting back tears, she recalls: “That day he decides to risk his life to save me. Who does that? It's the freaking apocalypse and he decides to risk his life. It's hard to put that into words.”
A day that changed everything
Until that fateful day, 2001 had been a very good year for Debbie, who had just turned 30. She had recently got engaged and says, “I truly believed it was going to be the best year of my life.” All that changed in an instant on September 11.
Early that morning Debbie was riding the subway on her way into work as a consultant for American Express at the World Trade Center in New York City. Unbeknown to her at 8.41am ET (1.46pm BST) the first of four planes hijacked by terrorists flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
As Debbie exited the subway station under the Twin Towers, pandemonium had already broken loose on the streets. “I just heard someone yell, ‘Run for cover’,” she recalls today, speaking ahead of a new television documentary about 9/11 survivors who have been reunited 25 years on from the terrorist attacks.
The moment of impact
Debbie immediately sprinted eastwards away from the skyscrapers and the billowing black cloud of smoke pouring into the sky. But as she ran, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower at 9.03am ET (2.03pm BST), sending heavy debris hurtling to the ground.
Stefan, a German bond trader who worked two blocks from the World Trade Center, was running alongside Debbie when the second plane hit. Taking up the story, he says: “It was like a huge fireball and all these pieces were spreading in the air and coming down.
“I saw this big piece of plane falling towards me. It looked like the blade of the engine coming straight down at us. I thought, ‘This is going to hit me. I'm going to be dead’. But instead, it hit the woman running next to me. It should have been me, not her.”
The woman in question was Debbie. While Stefan could easily have continued running, he stopped and rushed to the side of the stricken stranger. “Debbie was lying in the street and afraid, very afraid,” he explains of that decision. “I knew I had to help her. You can't believe it. There's that beautiful woman just lying there, not moving. She was awake, but in shock.
“I said to her, ‘My name is Stefan. I'm here to help’. I was trying to protect her from the stampede of people running past and the pieces of debris still coming down.”
At first, Stefan did not realise how seriously injured Debbie was. “There was not too much blood. It looked quite good. Then I saw that the blade had cut through her back. She was basically naked as her clothes had been ripped off.” For the sake of her dignity, Stefan took his own shirt off and used it to cover up Debbie.
What happened next horrified him. “I noticed that when I tried to wrap my shirt underneath her, my hands went inside her body. What I was feeling were her intestines. Everything on her back was missing. How do you fix that?”
A remarkable rescue
Unbeknown to the pair, Debbie had suffered major internal injuries and blood loss. Her intestines were punctured, the skin and muscle from her buttocks were torn off and her legs were shattered below the knees. But at that moment Stefan’s overriding thought was keeping Debbie alive and safe.
“I kept telling her, ‘Don't fall asleep, keep your eyes open, I'm not going to let you go, stay alive’,” he remembers.
“It was just a crazy moment. She was in shock. Her big eyes were looking at me, and she couldn't move. I thought that she would die then. It's something you're never going to forget. It doesn't matter how prepared you may feel as a human being, you're never going to be ready for something like that. You're completely helpless. Those images are still in my head all the time.”
What happened next was a remarkable stroke of luck. An ambulance, already packed with casualties, drove past but stopped after seeing Debbie lying on the ground. Speaking in the documentary, driver Orlando Martinez says he couldn't leave Debbie lying there in such a grave situation.
“She was being held by some guy. It was pretty heroic,” he remembers. “I said, ‘That’s someone's daughter. Maybe she has a kid. Maybe she's someone's mother. I've got to stop’.” Orlando rushed Debbie to hospital while Stefan was left wondering what became of her. For more than 20 years, he did not even know if she had survived her catastrophic injuries.
A long road to recovery
Debbie was the first person admitted to hospital on 9/11 and the last to leave. Doctors managed to save her legs following extensive surgeries. She spent 18 months in hospital and had 50 operations in total. “My experience after 9/11 was a long, difficult road,” she says. “It's been a fight for survival, fighting to have a real life and to thrive.”
Today, happily, she is flourishing. Married with two daughters, she has shown a resilience that defies belief. She has relearned how to walk, although she requires a wheelchair some of the time, and can even ride a horse.
To mark the 25th anniversary of America’s most devastating terrorist attack on home soil, Debbie was reunited with Stefan for the moving documentary 9/11 Reunited on National Geographic and Disney+. The pair met at Debbie's home for the first time in 25 years where they smiled at one another before embracing for a long time. No words were necessary.
Stefan, who is also married with children, recalls their powerful reunion as “a magic moment”. He beams: “It was very emotional. It was a miracle that the reunion happened. I always thought, ‘I want to meet her’ but you also have to show respect. You don't want to interfere or bug her. You just can't go and knock on the door and say ‘Hi’. You have to wait’.
“[During the reunion] I said to Debbie, ‘I’m super-proud of you. Seeing how you looked on 9/11, it's just wonderful that you survived. You have achieved so many good things. You’ve married, you’ve had kids’. For me, it was an enormous sense of relief and closure. Something beautiful happened when we met again, and I felt like I had done something good.”
Debbie is also greatly moved by the experience, telling Stefan, “I'm just so thankful and grateful that you're such a special person.”
A total of 2,977 innocent people lost their lives on 9/11. The story of Debbie and Stefan shows there were precious moments of light that day despite the overwhelming loss and scale of devastation. It also speaks to the power of altruism and compassion shown by some individuals when confronted by evil.
This story has a happy ending for Debbie and Stefan. Since their reunion they have formed a close friendship. “We stay in touch,” Stefan says. “We text, we talk to each other, we send pictures back and forth. It's just like a super-close, family-type of friendship.”
They also know that no one else in the world has been through what they have. “It’s this extraordinary bond that no one else can understand,” explains Stefan. “It's very different from a regular friendship. Debbie knows that whatever she needs, I'll be there for her.” He finds her example extremely inspiring. “She's an unbelievably strong person. That she survived is a miracle. I lost a lot of friends in the attack, but the fact that she survived gave me a positive attitude. Even though I was helpless, I helped someone and that made me feel good.”
Stefan reflects on what people might take away from this story. “An awareness that when bad times happen, we should be there for each other,” he says. “If someone’s in trouble, have a look. What can be done? Does this person need help? Life is beautiful, and it has to go on, right? We are human beings. It's important to help others, whatever the situation.”
His selflessness has led many people to call him a hero. But ever the humble man, he rejects that description. “I don't know if I feel like a hero. I just did what I felt I had to do, and I would always do that,” he says. Debbie would beg to differ, though, seeing Stefan as an astoundingly heroic human being. “My hopes, my dreams, my possibilities are because of Stefan,” she says.
She is especially delighted to have had the opportunity to show him her ability to walk. As the tears flow again, she smiles: “I've worked real hard on it. It makes me think a lot about the movie Saving Private Ryan. At the end of the movie, Private Ryan looks to his family and says, ‘Have I lived well enough to deserve this life?’ That's something I keep with me every day. My hope is that all my efforts will prove to be good enough to deserve Stefan saving my life.”
When asked what Stefan means to her, Debbie replies, “Well, I hold him on a pedestal. He's perfect. He can do no wrong.
“He makes me want to be better always, every moment, all the time. He is my saviour. Hands down.”
9/11 Reunited premieres on National Geographic tonight at 9pm and is available to stream on Disney+ now.
