Horwitz, Sam - Meet Our Veterans

Samantha (Sam) Horwitz

Former United States Secret Service Agent

Grand Saline, Tx.

NOTE: In this article the writer uses the term PTSI/D, (Post Traumatic Stress Injury/Disorder). I prefer to call PTSI an Injury and not a Disorder.

It is 8:46 a.m. in New York City on September 11, 2001. Samantha (Sam) Horwitz is in the elevator at WTC 1 North Tower.

“I am in the elevator car of WTC 1 North Tower when it starts to shake violently,” said Sam, remembering 9/11 on the 25th anniversary. “Lights are flickering on and off, and I am thinking I am going to be stuck in an elevator and be late for work. The elevator starts moving up really fast and stops at the lobby level. The doors immediately fly open, and there is a large debris field of papers and hot dust that blew us backward into the elevator car. Immediately my ‘training’ brain took over and I thought, Explosion—get out.”

WTC 1993 Bombing:

“We had just been briefed on the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. I thought it was a bomb. I started grabbing people in the elevator and yelled, Come on, we need to get out. People do interesting things under stress. There were three people in the elevator—an older gentleman and two women, one of whom was pregnant. I grabbed the two women by their arms and said, Let’s go.”There was a lot of dust, but you could still see. We started up the escalator, and there was a set of exit doors that led out to the plaza level, which moved you away from WTC 7. We exited the door, and that is where everything just stopped. I started taking everything in—the debris and everything coming down around us. We were protected by an overhang, and most of the debris was hitting it and falling off its roof. Paper was everywhere. We slowly moved under this canopy to the front of WTC 6, and I see some of my squad and my supervisor. I finally make it over to my building, WTC 7, and I am wondering what is going on. I could not see the tops of any of the buildings from my location. I was still thinking there had to be some sort of explosion.

Minutes later, I was in our lobby bodega cafeteria drinking some orange juice when I heard the second tower being hit. I just saw the glass front of our building bow and blow inward. This mass of people started pushing through the lobby and was crushing me behind the cafeteria countertop. I started yelling and made my way through the crowd. We had private security in our building. I told them and others, “This building is getting evacuated now.” I knew one of the security guards very well, and he just started pushing people out. We finally made our way through the building’s loading dock and out onto West Side Highway. We see WTC 1 in front of us and WTC 2 behind it. We look up, and our crime-scene investigator brains take over. We recognized the big hole in WTC 1 with all kinds of stuff coming out of it. To a trained investigator, it looked like something from inside the building blew everything out.

A supervisor of ours kept saying, ‘We are too close,’ so we moved back to a ballpark nearby.

We stand there and stare up. We see something falling from the sky. OH MY GOD, that’s a person!”

Excerpt from the book *The Silent Fall* by Sam Horwitz

“When I saw the second one, however, there was no mistaking what it was. We were so close we could feel the ground tremble when the bodies hit the concrete. After the tenth body, I stopped counting. No one wanted to believe what we were witnessing. My supervisor said over and over again, We’re too close. This is too close. To this day I can only imagine the choice to jump or burn to death—it still makes me shudder.

There was a shockwave when they hit. There have been estimates of upwards of 200 people who jumped out of the Towers.

I set this aside and later processed it with professional help. In trauma, the mind snaps images like a high-speed camera shutter—bodies falling from the sky. The brain hunts for a label, then (if you reach REM sleep) processes it by scanning long-term memory for anything similar. No one has lived this before. Trauma blocks REM sleep, so the images keep circulating with nowhere to go. You force yourself not to think about it and push on to the next assignment.”

The Dark Suit with the Red Tie:

“That’s my jumper, that’s my jumper.” (Sam pauses for a few seconds to gather her thoughts. This moment obviously had a tremendous impact on Sam 25 years later)

“It is out of sadness of me being emotional,” said Sam. “All these years later of being separated from what we now know of 9/11… It is not what we were told happened. When people die for no reason, or when people go to war for 20 years and die for no reason—sadness and a little ticked-offness. The jumper in the dark suit and red tie stayed with me the longest. My therapist helped me through that difficult process,” sighed Sam.

“We slowly turn around and exit off the ballfield and hear this low, grumbling, growling sound.

As we were exiting the ballfield, there was an agent who stopped his car next to us. He had the police radio on, and that’s when we heard the Pentagon had been hit. He looked at us and said, Did you know it was planes? Planes, What are you talking about? Then he told us what had happened to the Twin Towers. My first thought was, are we at war?

The noise varied in intensity, and then it got really loud. We ran as we watched Tower 2 come down and ended up in the lobby of a school. Dust is everywhere, and guys are ripping up their shirts, making facial bandanas in order to go outside to try and rescue people. Me and two other agents decide to stay behind in the school, about four blocks from the Trade Centers. We are trained to save people. We had gym mats ready and first-aid kits from the nurses. We were ready to start helping people. But nobody came to our makeshift triage center. The ambulances could easily come where we were, but no one showed up,” sighed Sam.

(Photo above was published by People magazine—that is Sam in the back right corner)

“We start evacuating the school. We had no idea this was a school for physically and mentally handicapped kids—walkers, wheelchairs, crutches. There was this six-foot or taller kid walking next to me, and he was scared. Outside of the school he stopped walking. I hear that low, grumbling, growling sound again; then WTC 1 starts to come down. We scoop him up and start running up West Side Highway. We place him on a gurney and start exiting the school.

Tower One is coming down, and we are running up West Side Highway. I had a hold of his leg, and an EMT/firefighter was next to me. All of a sudden, an ambulance arrived from out of nowhere, and an EMT/firefighter takes his leg from me. They put him on a stretcher and load him into the ambulance with his aide. He gets in the ambulance with the aide, and then they disappear.

We see all these people coming out of the fog like you would see in a movie. Some had blood on them from being hit with stuff.

We had scrolling text on our pagers, and I had a mobile phone along with my badge. Our communications were still coming out of WTC 7, where just the front of the building was impacted—like a little glass and chunks taken out. It was still standing. My pager goes off and says all NYFO Agents (New York Field Office) go to Pier 63. We were about 20 blocks away from there.”

At approximately 5:20 that evening, WTC 7 collapsed.

Going Back to My Apartment:

“I could not slow down my adrenaline. My keys were in my car under tons of rubble, and I could not get into my apartment or my personal vehicle. I went to my neighbor for help. All I remember is her talking to me and her mouth moving, but there was no comprehension of what she was saying at all. I knew something was wrong with me but had no idea exactly what it was. She took me to the dealership, and they made me a new key.

I get back to the apartment and just want to get out of my suit. It is covered in dust. It is shower time. I go into the bathroom and close the door. I start sweating and my heart starts racing. I feel like my heart is going to jump out of my chest. I open the door, walk out to my living room, and go, ‘Whoa—think. I am not claustrophobic, and I have never suffered from anxiety. What was that?

I go into my living room, calm myself down, and walk back into the bathroom. Same thing. WHAT is going on?

My boyfriend—future husband—calls, and he is already on his way. I told him what was going on with me. In an earlier conversation with my mom, she told me, either he is going to run or y’all are going to get married.

You see someone’s character under these circumstances—how someone is going to respond. After he arrived, he sat on the floor just outside the bathroom, and I was finally able to take a shower.

I knew exactly where I was—in my apartment, taking a shower, and Steve was there. I can’t say everything was good, but I was calm and not having that sweaty, anxious feeling.”

However, Sam was not her normal self. She started seeing the man in the dark suit and red tie more often. Sweating, jets flying over, loud noises, and other trigger points took her back to 9/11. Sam started pushing everybody in her life away from her. She became very isolated. “I was not able to be the Sam that Steve had known. If I talked about it, I became angry and closed everyone out of my life. I was becoming a different person—like an octopus with its arms all around me. I can’t escape it, and Steve can’t get the octopus off me. It was all in my head. He and everyone around me can’t see inside my head,” said a frustrated Sam.

“We talked very little about PTSI/D in my training with the Secret Service. It was only a 30-minute block. We were told, this is a very intense job, and you might see some stuff.

My mom would tell me, hey, I think you need to talk to somebody coming from a non-clinical mom. Steve didn’t know what to think of me. Fortunately, he stuck around,” said Sam.

“I went to my supervisors at the Secret Service seeking help—not once but twice. I asked them for a transfer. There were openings in D.C., and I felt I needed to get back to what was familiar to me. They said they would get back to me. I was already talking with our health folks, but they were in D.C. at the Service. Our squad had one debrief with them. After it ended, they handed their cards out to everyone and said if we needed anything to call them. As time went on, no one wanted to talk about the two-ton elephant in the room. Being one of the only female agents, I kind of tiptoed around certain subjects. How much can I let these guys see what’s going on with me? We all saw the grief and anger amongst us in the debriefing.

You see us, you see the pain and suffering—why are you not stepping up to help us?” Sam said, shaking her head.

“We are the second-largest field office in the Secret Service, and now we don’t have a field office. It has been destroyed. You want us to function like there is nothing wrong. It is not possible. I was not sleeping, not eating, couldn’t comprehend reports I had to write. The job was no longer fun. I couldn’t do my job anymore—at least not to my standards. I finally handed in my resignation. I NEVER quit anything,” Sam said, shaking her head.

Dealing with PTSI/D:

“With all the trauma and dealing with survivor’s guilt, you put yourself in an unwinnable situation. I couldn’t save 3,000 people on 9/11. The Towers came down; there was nobody to save. That was my survivor’s guilt. With the jumpers I just thought about what a horrible decision they had to make to jump.

With people diagnosed with PTSI/D, it is absolutely something you can recover from. There is no timeline. Everyone’s experiences are different. Just because a first responder or veteran receives this diagnosis does not mean they cannot do their jobs or that they are a bad police officer, firefighter, or combat veteran.

Today we see more companies understand that when an employee has problems, they encourage folks to seek help. Just because they have PTSI/D does not mean they are going to freeze under stressful situations. No—You will always fall to the level of your training. That’s why it’s important to train often. That includes your brain too.

With PTSI/D it’s important to normalize the responses to trauma—to understand that it’s completely normal to have nightmares, flashbacks, and difficulty focusing in the days and weeks that follow. Been a witness to something traumatic that your brain cannot process? Guess what—you are completely normal!

On average, a civilian in our society will experience maybe four traumatic events in their lifetime. A first responder, over a 20-year career, may experience up to 800 traumas, especially if they are serving in a big city. The brain is not designed to deal with that. If you see something bad and it stays with you—at first that’s normal. It’s what happens when the event stays with you for more than a month. When you are triggered and you flash back to the event as if you’re in it, that’s when you must take a closer look.

For me, when I started sweating in the bathroom, I was aware that something was off. It’s the awareness and the abnormal heart rate—that is when you have to be aware. I have experienced this; now, what is normal for me to experience moving forward? That is the biggest thing that is missing for a lot of folks—the understanding of what is ‘normal’ after a traumatic event that is vital for understanding PTSI/D.

Some may say my experience in the bathroom was abnormal. It is not abnormal to lose sleep or relive your trauma. I have experienced this; now what is a normal response for me to experience? These are just normal stress responses to the crazy, abnormal stuff you have just experienced. You are not abnormal; you are 100% normal. It’s your brain responding to what you just went through. Why does our society, and some of the leadership in law enforcement, have this idea that someone can’t do their job with these normal responses to the stress?”

Last Week of 2002: I Hit Rock Bottom

Sam’s life is spiraling out of control. Two bottles of wine a night—PTSI/D has taken over her entire life. Sam just wants it all to stop.

“Why did I get to that point?” Sam paused and spoke. “I pushed everybody away. My faith was gone. It’s the pain. I was in so much pain. In my view of myself—being trained at the highest level of law enforcement and being an athlete all my life—I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t fix my life, and somebody who wasn’t there, who didn’t experience what I did—how in the world could they possibly help me?

I let the pain overwhelm me.

I will never forget when I woke up; it was New Year’s Eve. I did not even recognize my own reflection in the mirror. It was the scariest moment of my life. I told myself, I am done. I cannot live another year like I lived this one.

We are so good at putting on fake smiles. Someone asks, Are you okay? You respond with the F-word: I’m FINE.

We had friends over to celebrate the New Year, I put on that fake smile. After everyone left I was just going to go up to bed and try and get some sleep. I could not sleep through the night. I would drink just enough so I could fall asleep. But a nightmare would always wake me up.”

Sam, what triggered you that night? What made you want to take your service weapon and go down into the basement?

“It was because I did not recognize myself at all. It was quiet, and I went down to the kitchen and grabbed the remaining bottles of alcohol, went down into the basement, sat on the floor, and started drinking. I grabbed my gun and said, ‘This is it—I am done.’ I closed my eyes and started to squeeze the trigger. Then a voice out of nowhere said my name, followed by, ‘IT IS NOT YOUR TIME.’ I was in such a dark place. I did not believe that I was being spoken to.

I drank a little bit more and almost passed out.

I put the gun up to my head again and started squeezing the trigger, and all of a sudden, my Miniature Schnauzer, Solomon, is in my lap. He looked at me with his big brown eyes. I put the gun down and passed out.

What is DOG spelled backwards? I had heard that phrase recently where I was doing a book signing. Of course, dog spelled backwards spells GOD.

At that point I was, ‘How did that happen?’ Solomon was sleeping in his bed in our bedroom behind our closed door. The BIG MAN upstairs is going to do what he has to do to make you listen. I eventually passed out,” said Sam.

Years later, after she moved to Texas, Sam realized how important Solomon was in saving her life. “It was my ah-ha moment.” The dog spelled backward really hit her hard. She went to church meetings, listened to veterans, and realized she was not alone. “I’m not special. I am part of an elite group that has seen a lot of crap, and I am not disordered PTSI/D. I spent a lot of time outdoors after therapy with people who understood. I realized I was not alone—the focus and the quiet. If you want to get better, you don’t have a choice. You have to make that time for yourself.

When I woke up in my basement, it was the catalyst for figuring out ‘It’s not your time’ and what that meant. I’m listening now. I had to figure out Plan B. In the mindset I was in, it was not easy. At any moment ‘STUFF’ can take you sideways.

About a year and a half later, Steve and my mom were talking in the living room. They told me it seemed like I wasn’t here anymore—it’s like you checked out. Then one day my mom came over unannounced, handed me the name and number of a therapist. She said, ‘I love you—we need you back.”

EMDR for Treating PTSI/D

“EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is one of the most effective tools in the toolbox to help those diagnosed with PTSI/D.

For therapists, EMDR is a certified skill to treat somebody with PTSI/D. I was blessed to find a therapist, Harriett Yoselle. She was a nurse and then got into the clinical side. Working with her, I started seeing improvement. EMDR was still considered experimental at the time, but it works,” said Sam. “Some therapists use a light bar for your eyes to track; some use their finger for you to follow, tapping of the knees, and some use paddles to stimulate both sides of the brain. There is also an audio component, and you combine the different methods to see which is most beneficial to you. I started with the light bar and headphones. At one point I wanted to throw the headphones across the room. The auditory stimulation triggered me. Anytime I smelled burning concrete, it triggered me and I was right back at 9/11. The noise was the Towers coming down.

I started my therapy with my anxiety level way up—like a 9 or 10—with the goal of getting it down to a 1 or 0. My timeline was a year; the treatment is much faster now. EMDR is one of the most effective tools, especially for first responders and people with cumulative trauma.

We start to peel back the layers of the onion. You walk in there thinking your anxiety and the trauma is because of the actual trauma, when it could possibly be something that happened to you when you were six. You will go all the way back to six in your session, and it will eventually come out. You are talking about 9/11; they are talking about a trauma that happened way back in childhood. Throughout the process, each time you peel a layer back, the brain is searching for that label we talked about earlier. I can’t get the jumper out of my head. Is it because of something I witnessed when I was a young kid? Grown-up Sam doesn’t even remember seeing anything like that as a kid. EMDR goes back and brings it together—‘Oh, this relates to that’—and now we heal that. Your level just went from a 10 to a 1 or zero. The brain says, ‘Now I recognize it,’ and that is how EMDR connects the dots. It is building new neural pathways, making the brain stronger again. It is just a brilliant treatment protocol, and you have to be 100% qualified to use this with a patient and have many years dealing with PTSI/D.

There are other treatment protocols as well—kayak fishing, mountain biking, surfing, hiking, or just being with other like-minded people. All these methods are a great relief but not a cure. You always want to talk, which alleviates pressure. You never want to think you are alone with this. You are not alone.

There is an organization called 22Zero. When we experience trauma, we connect emotions to it. We use EMDR to help the trauma not affect us—to help us alleviate the triggers. Then, and it could be 10 years down the road, all of a sudden you have an angry outburst. You wonder, ‘Where did that come from?’ You think you are regressing and going back to the PTSI/D from the past. It is the emotions still attached to the trauma that don’t get dealt with. EMDR doesn’t do that. 22Zero deals specifically with the emotional component, and even after 25 years separated from 9/11, it is still the emotions that are there. I went through their treatment protocol. Do I still get emotional with the jumper? Yes, I am human. It is no longer connected to the trauma of 9/11, however. I am feeling normal emotions. It is the awareness. The more you understand yourself, the faster the healing,” said Sam.

EMDR saved Sam’s life. Her dog, Solomon, saved her life. Her husband, Steve, and her mom all helped in saving Samantha Horwitz’s life. Her therapist, Harriett Yoselle, and even a speech from a veteran all helped Sam live a full and productive life.

“I went to hear a speech by a Vietnam veteran named Dave Roever. For me, it was a miracle. He could bear his scars. He stood up in front of the room and asked, ‘WHY ME, GOD?’ A phosphorus grenade went off and 90% of his body was burned. He talked about wanting to die because of his pain. His life was spared to go on and help people.

To understand and bear what I had been through, and to keep that inside, was selfish. God accepted me as I was, even when I thought I was damaged. I was meant to do something with my life. It can’t be for nothing,” Sam said, smiling.

“May 2, 2011, was a big day for me—the day Osama Bin Laden was killed. His death helped bury some of my demons.”

Fifteen years after 9/11, Sam gains the courage to visit the 9/11 Memorial in New York. She needed to make peace with Mohammad Atta, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 11 that struck WTC 1, the ringleader of the attack on the World Trade Centers.

Did you feel like you were well on the road to recovery at that time?

“Yes, that was definitely the last piece. The memorial is so well done. I was standing on hallowed ground. A tremendous number of emotions came over me.”

Excerpt from the book *The Silent Fall* by Sam Horwitz

“At first, I was hesitant to enter. But a museum volunteer encouraged me to go in. I walked to the first reflecting pool. It was built on the exact site where WTC 2 used to be. The name of every person who was killed is engraved in the brass railings which surround the pool.

Just keep breathing, Sam, I repeated to myself over and over again. As I looked down into the reflecting pool, my son took my hand. ‘Mom, why are all these names here?” he asked.

“As I started to answer, I choked up. I couldn’t speak. I motioned for Steve to help. He acted swiftly, answering Hayden’s question and putting his arm around me. We stood there quietly hugging each other.

In one section of the exhibit, I saw a picture of a Secret Service agent I served with. Hayden, come here, I said, as I motioned for him to join me. Mommy used to work with this man. His name is Tommy.” “Wow. He is rescuing that lady, isn’t he, Mom” Hayden asked.

“Yes, he is, Hayden. Tommy is a hero,” I said as I fought back tears.

“At 12:37 p.m. I stood before a picture of Mohammad Atta’s face. I stared into his black eyes—the eyes of evil that had haunted me for years. I was angry. I took a deep breath. I cursed his face. I remembered all the beautiful things that had come into my life since 9/11. I felt God’s presence. I felt safe. You will NOT have one more minute of my life.”

I slowly looked into Sam’s eyes and asked, Sam, is it okay for people to call you a hero today?

“SURE. It is hard to accept. It will always be, I was just doing my job. I realized that if I had not grabbed those two people, they may not have made it out alive.”

Sam Horwitz, thank you for your dedication to our country while serving in the United States Secret Service.

Your dedication and sacrifices will not be forgotten.

NOTE: Meet other Veterans and First Responders from around the country by going to the top of www.meetourveterans.com and click on Meet Our Veterans. On the drop-down menu, click one of the (5) branches of services and read each of our veteran’s stories.

“Every Veteran has a story to tell.” —Phil Smith

GOD BLESS OUR VETERANS, FIRST RESPONDERS, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA