For 27 terrifying hours, Genelle Guzman-McMillan lay pinned beneath the ruins of the World Trade Center's North Tower. Nearly everyone around her was gone, her right leg was crushed, and she could move only one arm. Then, when she believed she could hold on no longer, a mysterious man named Paul appeared to answer her desperate prayer.
Guzman-McMillan was working for the Port Authority on the 64th floor when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The 30-year-old Trinidad native began descending the stairs with her coworkers, but the North Tower collapsed while she was near the 13th floor.
Buried beneath concrete and twisted steel, Guzman-McMillan faced the possibility that she would never see her daughter or boyfriend again. With her strength fading, she began speaking to God and promised to change her life if she survived.
That was when she heard someone call to her.
The man identified himself as Paul, took her exposed hand and assured her that she would be all right. He reportedly remained with her until rescuers reached the spot. Yet after Guzman-McMillan was freed, she could not locate the man who had comforted her. No rescuer matching the "Paul" she remembered was ever conclusively identified.
Guzman-McMillan believes the stranger was an angel sent by God at the moment she was ready to surrender. While that conclusion remains her personal testimony rather than a verifiable fact, she has never doubted that God met her beneath the rubble.
She became the final survivor pulled alive from the World Trade Center wreckage, emerging approximately 27 hours after the North Tower fell. Her rescue came with a difficult recovery: she underwent multiple operations, narrowly avoided losing her leg and spent more than a month in the hospital. She continues to walk with a limp.
Yet the tragedy also marked a spiritual turning point. Guzman-McMillan married her boyfriend, Roger McMillan, less than two months after the attacks, raised three daughters and later returned to work for the Port Authority. She chronicled her extraordinary testimony in the memoir Angel in the Rubble.
Her story has now reached the screen in Lifetime's Angel in the Rubble: The Genelle Guzman Story, starring Sherri Shepherd. The film premiered during the 25th-anniversary observance of the attacks, bringing renewed attention to Guzman-McMillan's survival, faith and struggle with survivor's guilt. People reports that she continues to view her survival as a second chance entrusted to her by God.
Guzman-McMillan's testimony does not erase the almost 3,000 lives lost on September 11. Instead, it offers a small light within one of America's darkest days. Her story declares that prayer can still rise from beneath unbearable sorrow-and that even when a person feels completely buried, she may not be alone.
"I was given a new life," Guzman-McMillan has said. "I know that God has a bigger plan for me."
