2017 NJSPBA Mini-Convention
THE SPARK OF HOPE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31
As his team entered the Tower One concourse, he could hear bodies hitting the pavement. He witnessed thousands of people being herded like cattle out of Tower Two. In the main corridor, he said he saw a piece of a plane. All of the clues were right before his eyes, but still, Jimeno could not comprehend what was happening.
“ It’ s like I’ m dreaming,” he continued.“ The human mind can’ t make sense of something like this.”
What he could make sense of was the amount of love and bravery he witnessed amidst the turbulence of disaster. He can still picture in his mind the image of civilians helping one another out of the turmoil. At one point he saw two men, one black and one white, carrying a bloodied woman, and he could feel a unity unlike anything he had ever experienced.
“ In the midst of that much evil, what I saw that day was so much love,” Jimeno stressed.
He held that image of love with him as he, McLoughlin, Pezzulo, Rodrigues and Chris Amoroso ran from the North Tower to the South Tower. And when the explosion of the second collision hit, Jimeno followed the man he knew would increase his odds of survival, Sergeant McLoughlin, to take cover in a freight elevator.
That was the start of 13 hours of darkness. Rodrigues and Amoroso didn’ t make it through the blast. When Tower Two crumbled on top of him, a concrete wall completely crushed Jimeno’ s left side. He was unable to move. All he could see was concrete and dust, but he was alive.
“ Macho is doing what you have to do, when you have to do it. At that point I actually just wanted to die,” Jimeno shares.“ I had been crushed, shot at, burnt, and lost three teammates. I made my peace with God.”
During those longest hours of his life, after he watched his closest law enforcement friend, Pezzulo, die, Jimeno could do nothing but hold on to his faith, the love he witnessed that day and the hope he had to be there for the birth of his daughter. He refused to let the terrorists take away that privilege. So, he put his hands across his chest in the“ I love you” sign and waited.
“ We’ re going to get out of this hellhole,” assured McLoughlin, who was also trapped deep under the wreckage.
Sixteen years later, Jimeno, who was obviously granted a disability retirement after enduring a bevy of surgeries to save his left leg, stands in front of a room of New Jersey law enforcement as living proof that man can withstand the weight of a 1,360- foot tower. He shares his story as a testament to the hell that a person can live through as long as has he or she holds on to the ideals of faith, hope and love. And at the end of the day, when the dust settles and the burden of the job starts to wear down the resilience, Jimeno insists that officers be macho enough to be patient and help their brothers and sisters through, because that’ s what being blue is all about.
“ Unfortunately there are going to be people in this room that are going to get injured,” Jimeno states.“ I was buried alive. You have to find it within yourself to survive and find your way out of a bad place. Remember why you became a cop and think to yourself,‘ If he can have two buildings fall on him, so can I.’” d
32 NEW JERSEY COPS ■ MARCH 2017