Purpose-driven life

Cinema | Five years later, a survivor of the Twin Towers’ collapse—and real-life hero of the new movie World Trade Center—sees each day as an opportunity to “do right” | Lynn Vincent

When Will Jimeno thinks of the day he almost died, he doesn't envision the great, ominous shadow he saw flash over the intersection of 8th Avenue and 42nd Street at 8:44 a.m., strangely low and in the shape of an airliner. He doesn't replay images of the men and women he saw leaping from the Twin Towers, so close he could tell what they were wearing. Neither does he dwell on the concrete avalanche that crushed three men beside him and nearly formed his tomb.

Instead, five years later, he dwells on heroes. "I saw civilians filing calmly out of the [Tower Two] concourse," said Jimeno, a New York Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) rescuer portrayed by Michael Peña in Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (see page 8). "Two gentlemen were helping a lady with blonde hair. She had a skirt on and her leg was bleeding profusely. They could've just dropped this lady and let somebody else save her, but they didn't. If that isn't heroism, I don't know what is."