Melissa Cándida "Missy" Doi (September 1, 1969 — September 11, 2001) was an American businesswoman in the financial industry who was a victim of the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

on the

World Trade Center World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association. World Trade Center may refer to: Buildings * List of World Trade Centers * World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...

. She is known for the recording of the

9-1-1 , usually written 911, is an emergency telephone number for the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Palau, Argentina, Philippines, Jordan, as well as the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), one of eight N11 codes. Like other emergency nu ...

call she made during her final moments from inside the South Tower as it was engulfed in flames. The recording was used during the prosecution of

Zacarias Moussaoui Zacarias Moussaoui (Arabic: زكريا موسوي, '; born May 30, 1968) is a French member of al-Qaeda who pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to conspiring to kill citizens of the United States as part of the September 11 attacks. He is serv ...

, the only criminal trial to result from the attacks. Her emotional conversation with emergency operator Barnes made several international headlines.

Early life

Melissa was the only child of a single mother, Evelyn Alderete. Doi graduated from the

Spence School , motto_translation = Not for school, but for life we learn , founder = Clara B. Spence , tuition = $60,880 (2022-2023) , chair = , head_label = , head ...

, before attending

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

, where she graduated in 1991 with a sociology degree and was a member of

Delta Gamma Delta Gamma (), commonly known as DG, is a women's fraternity in the United States and Canada with over 250,000 initiated members. It has 150 collegiate chapters and more than 200 alumnae groups. The organization's executive office is in Columbus ...

sorority. She had ambitions to become a ballet dancer.

Death and 9-1-1 call recording

According to the 9-1-1 recording played during the trial of

, Melissa Doi made her call from the 83rd floor of the South Tower at 9:17 a.m., on September 11, 2001. When the South Tower of the World Trade Center was hit by

United Airlines Flight 175 United Airlines Flight 175 was a domestic passenger flight that was hijacked by five al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001, as part of the September 11 attacks. The flight's scheduled plan was from Logan International Airport, in Boston, M ...

at 9:03 a.m., she and another five people were trapped in the impact zone on the 83rd floor where IQ Financial Systems was located when she called 911. During the call, the operator tries to keep Doi calm and extract information from her. She answered, ''"Well, there's no one here yet, and the floor's completely engulfed. We're on the floor and we can't breathe, And it's very, very, very hot"''. Due to privacy reasons, only the first four minutes of the dispatch call, which lasted 24 minutes, was released by the courts along with the rest of the recordings, numbering more than 1,600. As the South Tower burned, she asked the operator, ''"Can you stay on the line with me, please? I feel like I'm dying."'' Near the end of the call, Doi spells out the last name of her mother and asks the dispatcher to set up a three-way call so that she can speak to her mother one last time. ''"We couldn't put her on,"'' the dispatcher says.'' "We don't have a three-way system for that."'' As smoke and heat began to overcome her, Doi gave the 911 operator her mother's name and phone number in hopes of passing on a last message. That evening, Alderete received a call from the 911 operator who had spoken with Doi while she was trapped in the stairwell, who said she had a message for Alderete from her daughter: ''"Tell my mother that I love her and that she's the best mom in the whole world." '' After minutes, the call cuts off. It took three years for her remains to be found in the rubble. At the

National 9/11 Memorial The National September 11 Memorial & Museum (also known as the 9/11 Memorial & Museum) is a memorial and museum in New York City commemorating the September 11 attacks of 2001, which killed 2,977 people, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombi ...

, Doi is memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-46.

Transcript of the 9-1-1 call

In popular culture

* The transcript of Doi's call to 9-1-1 is used as a motif in Mathew McIntosh's 2017 novel ''theMystery.doc''. * The transcript of Doi's call is referenced in Mitchell Zuckoff's 2019 account of the events of that day, titled ''Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11''. * The 9-1-1 call can be heard at the beginning of the 2012 movie ''

Zero Dark Thirty ''Zero Dark Thirty'' is a 2012 American thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal. The film dramatizes the nearly decade-long international manhunt for Osama bin Laden, leader of terrorist network Al-Qaeda, after the S ...

'' about the

Osama Bin Laden Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...

assassination.

References

External links