09/17/2026
Dr. Joscelyn Ramos Campbell
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🇺🇸🇨🇺🇵🇷🗽 What a way to begin Hispanic Heritage Month and commemorate 25 years since 9/11 in New York.
Thank you to everyone who has read, commented, and shared. This story has now reached around 2 million people across platforms and traveled around the world.
This trip became an emotional homecoming. People traveled to New York not only to remember, but to return pieces of my family’s history.
The most precious was a photograph of Dad and me during my first summer working in his office on the 19th floor of the South Tower. We believed it was lost forever on 9/11. Ms. Carole, one of Dad’s secretaries—whom he helped survive that day—had kept a duplicate. After her passing, her grandson Frankie found it, along with my World Trade Center pass marked 2/19. I’ve now been asked to submit this history to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
I also learned more about Dad’s life: my Cuban father was an early supporter and organizer of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade; his baseball career led to ceremonial first pitches; and in 1972 he received the American Heritage Award during a “Spanish Night” in New York. In 2025, I received the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award—continuing the legacy of service Mom and Dad began.
Agent Lee shared another chapter: when his family’s Chinatown restaurant was targeted by anti-Asian violence, my parents helped bring the community back—and I, a little girl in a She-Ra shirt, worked beside them asking, “What Would Jesus Do?” His family called me their 貴人 (Guìrén): a benefactor who arrives at the right moment.
The white suit and black dress I wore in New York belonged to Mom. Wearing them felt like carrying her with me.
As an only child, it has been my greatest honor to have always been by my late parents’ side throughout my life and to care for them in their final years. I’m humbled that this story has connected us across different generations and borders.
Thank you for reminding me: “You might be far, but you are never forgotten.”
John 13:34–35 | Jeremiah 29:11
