ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Nancy Rosado has an old package stored away in her Orlando home, but she can bring it out within minutes.<\/p>\n
Inside it is her old police cap from her time with the New York Police Department. It was shipped to her after she lost it on Sept. 11, 2001. The hat still has debris on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no words for it,\u201d Rosado said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a little heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosado worked in the NYPD\u2019s Early Intervention Unit. On Sept. 11, she was with a support group not far from the World Trade Center when she saw people looking up and pointing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI passed someone who said, \u2018It was a small plane or helicopter hit the World Trade Center\u2019,\u201d Rosado said. \u201cI get to the corner, look up, and the building had a gash in it that looked almost like a smile. And there were flames, but the flames weren\u2019t going up; they were going down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosado remembers the sights and sounds of the New York City streets at that moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see all this debris coming out of the building and paper,\u201d Rosado said. \u201cAs you got closer, you realize it wasn\u2019t just debris; it was people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosado said she pushed people to get away from the area. She also remembers seeing a police radio on the ground and hearing officers calling for help.<\/p>\n
\u201cCops who were maybe inside the building or in the surrounding or maybe already pinned, \u2018I\u2019m on such and such floor,\u2019 and you knew that floor didn\u2019t exist anymore,\u201d Rosado said. \u201cAnd then you would lose that voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Rosado, the experience has remained close.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it feels like yesterday,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She said the attacks had a lasting impact on the city and on first responders.<\/p>\n
Her work at the time focused on the mental health of others, leaving little time to address her own needs.<\/p>\n
Rosado said she developed a bad temper and wound up with skin cancer. She also saw a psychiatrist for the next seven years and did not begin prioritizing her own mental health until months after the attacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was not realizing what was happening to me \u2018cause I was taking on everyone else\u2019s story and figuring out what to do about everyone else,\u201d Rosado said.<\/p>\n
She said it remains important to keep talking about Sept. 11 and to preserve firsthand accounts as part of history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think any of us have left it behind,\u201d Rosado said. \u201cWe must never forget what happened. We must never forget the people who were willing to put their lives out there to possibly save other people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosado is now an activist and outreach consultant for UCF Restores, an initiative that helps first responders with trauma-related treatment. She also was selected to be part of the Pulse Memorial Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Nancy Rosado has an old package stored away in her Orlando home, but she can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[767,2967,274,770,1015,115,768,139,141,140,277,278,835],"class_list":["post-396369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-community","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-community-news","tag-emma-delamo","tag-news","tag-orange-county-fl","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-public-safety","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}