A rosary found intact under rubble and ashes

Isabel Lara lived close to the World Trade Center and after Sept. 11, she wasn't allowed to return home for a week. The only thing she could think about was one thing she left behind: a rosary.

“When I left Venezuela, I didn't realize that I wasn't ever going to return... There was this rosary that belonged to my grandmother that I took with me when I went off to graduate school in New York…”

After the 9/11 attack, blood donors were needed. So Isabel just grabbed her cellphone and her charger, and went. She wasn't able to go back to her apartment for a week…. But she kept thinking about the rosary she had left behind: “I was so concerned that I would lose it… nothing else in that apartment mattered to me except the rosary… When I was able to go back, I just walked into my apartment and there was ash everywhere... And right away, I went to see if the rosary was still there in my travel wallet, and it was…. I just felt such relief that it had survived 9/11… The rosary reminds me of my grandmother and, in a way, of my childhood and of the country that I left behind and that simply doesn't exist anymore.”

Isabel admits that she doesn’t pray much anymore, but when she does, she uses that rosary.

Adapted from NPR’s audio transcript of interview aired on December 26, 2018