there is a man we want to honor one man single-handedly cut the death toll from that terrible day nearly in half he saved 2 700 people and it's likely you have never heard his name this is his story and you'll meet the woman he loved and how she is honoring his memory rick riscorla was a security officer at morgan stanley in the south tower ever since the towers were hit in 1993 the 62 year old vietnam vet suspected it was still a target and told his wife as much it's why he insisted the morgan stanley
workers perform regular escape drills practicing getting thousands down quickly from 22 floors in the south tower those drills to the annoyance of many of the workers bill mcmahon was one of the employees and he was convinced i know you've heard this that this was going to happen again he just didn't know how but he knew something was going to happen and then it happened and that's when the plane hit us and it blew out all the elevator banks all the doors yes all the doors blew off and knocked us all over and the building kind
of tips like this and comes back now it doesn't seem that much when you watch it on tv but when we were in the building it literally moved back and forth despite receiving official instruction to stay in place rick refused grabbed his megaphone and told the workers to follow the evacuation plan just as they practiced rick sang songs from his childhood to keep everyone calm and he's telling everybody to be cool everybody's gonna be good and you know that's kind of what he did once it seemed all were evacuated rick went back to make sure
nobody was left behind rick said you know what i gotta go up now and sweep the floors and make sure that everybody's out of the building and that's why he didn't get out he didn't make it out of the building but because of him 2700 people did i mean in my view rick is just a true american hero we are joined by susan riscorla susan i cannot thank you enough for sharing a little of rick with us thank you so much for being here well thank you for having me what do you want people to
know about rick my husband was really a man of the universe he was a true renaissance person i've never met anybody like him in my whole life and i have known him better in death now than i did in life because we were only married a little over two and a half years and every single day he amazed me with his his whole being so anyway every everything he did was wonderful and we had a wonderful two and a half years together why were these safety drills so important to him and what would he tell
you about them i have to tell you that that last uh like say month of his life with me he was absolutely trying to tell me that you know he was trying to tell me that he thought something would happen and even even in the car he would say to me you know you'll remember me in the petal of a flower and the leaf of a tree um and and every time he talked about that i always said why why do you keep talking like this but now after he died i didn't know why because
he wanted me to know everything that he wanted me to do and that's what i did so you believe that he actually had some sort of sense a premonition or a feeling that something might happen definitely had a feeling even even the last week of his life you know it kept getting more intense and um i could just tell that there was a difference in him and i knew that he had a lot of things on his mind and that's exactly what it was what did he tell you about the drill specifically because they were
very important to him and not everybody in the office was on board with it right right now you have to remember that you know for two and a half years that i was married to him um i knew that you know that that they were getting very annoyed with him because he kept making them you know drill and everything and at the end of the day it was exactly what what he he wanted them to be able to do to get out of that building and that's what happened on that day you know when he
he came out of the building and then he went back up and he followed the firemen up and when he got to the top he wanted to make sure that everyone on that top floor was i was out of there and right before the towers came down he called me and he said to me if something happens to me i just want you to know that you made my life and so i was prepared at least i thought i was prepared and then of course after it happened you you just don't know what to do
and and i can imagine all these other people too you know it's um it's like you can be very religious and you can go to church and you can have a have one of the the church people come to your home i did reiki i did i can't tell you how many different kinds of things i did to try and and stop me from crying and to be so upset for this incredible thing that happened to all those people on that day it's just something that is with me and all those others who lost loved
ones it's with you all the time you just have to go on and know that you know i know that that someday i will be with him and that's what i look forward to susan uh you two had a routine uh nearly every single morning before he went to work you say something felt different that morning before he left can you tell us exactly what that feeling was yes and that and that day you know i was always up very early in the morning and i was always the first one down there and i was
always making him breakfast before he would go and this morning he got up really really early and he um was gathering his things together and so forth but he just seemed he just seemed a little bit different that day so he he did call me when he got to work like he always did and asked me what i was doing and i said i was hanging the clothes up to go on the trip and so forth and so on and then of course i got the final call when um his best friend had called me
to tell me to turn on the television and that's when i saw everything come down i can't imagine uh what that experience was like and you did share with us just a few minutes ago uh that he did call you he called you um and he shared those words with you um is there a message that you want to send to people who lost loved ones in the attack yes i can imagine that that all of us are the same underneath this the same thing i bet you anything that you can you can never forget
this and that's but i don't want anybody to forget this especially people who have lost loved ones i will never forget believe me i know i hear you and susan um what has your life been like in the last 21 years uh did you remarry what what is this uh weekend like for you okay well this is you know i usually am very quiet but what what i did was after he died i just decided that i i did many things okay i i did everything he asked me to do which was number one number
two i started traveling i've been traveling since i was 16 but i was i wanted to go to various countries and ask the young people what did they think about what happened to america on that day so i never stopped we his two best friends and i we we started i started a foundation and um and they were to raise money to put up a statue of him that that we did do and it went down to fort benning georgia where he went out before he went to vietnam that anybody could could see on one
side it's it's uh 911 and on the other side it's the vietnam war so anyway i kept i kept talking to people all these years and and i think i've i've done some very good things and i just didn't want anyone to forget what happened on that day and i never will incredible things that you've done susan thank you and you know susan there are entire generations of families that exist because of your husband what does it mean to you when people say i am alive or my loved ones are alive because of rick and
i am so happy because because he he not only made all those people you know come out and have to go up and down those stairs all the time that i know they were angry and everything but you know something um i i'm i'm very proud that he continued to you know have these people do that so that so that they could get out and and of course the the people that did not um i pray for their families also always susan is there anything else that you would like us to know today i just
think my husband was one of the most interesting one of the most incredible people i've ever met he was kind to everyone if he got off a train and he saw somebody that didn't have a coat on or or they he looked as if they needed money he always stopped or he went home and got clothing and he brought back to give them and he just you know was like that as a child i knew that from you know his his childhood friends and so forth and um i just think that this was a man
who just loved people and i think that he if you met him you would never forget him i that's how that's how i would describe him never forget him and i will love him for the rest of my life susan your life certainly shines through thank you so much um for your time we are touched by your husband's heroism and certainly by your strength and your good works thank you so much and i thank you thank you all the best thank you for watching go to newsnationnow.com to find news nation on your television provider and
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