Daycare teachers rescued 28 children from World Trade Center during 9/11 attacks

At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, the Children’s Discovery Center daycare in building five of the World Trade Center was in the middle of morning drop-off when Flight 11 struck the north tower. Teachers Tara Jones and Onica Sarjeant, recalling drills from the 1993 bombing, rushed the toddlers out, carrying infants and urging walking children to line up, even crawling under turnstiles to escape. They led the group past the plaza, paused at St. Paul’s Chapel’s cemetery, then split, with Jones’s team heading north to City Hall Park and eventually Chinatown, while Sarjeant’s group moved southeast toward a supermarket and later an East Village church.

Both groups found shelter at St. Clare’s in Hell’s Kitchen and other sites, where parents were eventually located; all 28 children were reunited, though the teachers suffered long-term PTSD and financial hardship. Their actions, modestly described as duty rather than heroism, saved lives and highlight the human cost of the attacks.