A Maricopa County Attorney's Office detective spent months working recovery and security operations at Ground Zero after the September 11 attacks, and he only learned more than a year later that he appeared in one of the event's most iconic photographs. David Salvador, a retired NYPD officer who now leads executive protection for Maricopa County prosecutors, has opened up publicly for the first time about that experience and about a lung disease he was later diagnosed with during annual 9/11 responder health screenings.
Salvador served 20 years with the New York Police Department before retiring and moving to Arizona in 2012, according to AZ Family. On September 12, 2001, two Bronx Emergency Service Unit officers took a flag from a nearby high school to Ground Zero and, with Salvador among the responders present, secured it to the north tower antenna using duct tape, wire and straps, the station reports. It became the first flag raised in the secured zone of Ground Zero, and responders on scene saluted it as flags went up throughout New York City in the days that followed.
A Photo He Didn't Know He Was In
Salvador didn't realize he was captured in the photograph of that flag-raising until more than a year after it was taken, per the station's report. The delayed discovery mirrors a broader pattern among Ground Zero responders, many of whom only years later learned the extent of their own presence in the historical record or the toll their service would eventually take on their bodies.
During his time at the site, Salvador and other responders dug through and removed debris from a mound that burned for 100 days, the article notes. The rubble contained hot spots, and alarms regularly signaled that something was collapsing or shifting beneath the wreckage. More than 400 police officers and firefighters died on September 11, 2001, and Salvador has said the attacks have never stopped taking lives in the years since.
A Diagnosis Two Decades Later
Salvador was diagnosed with lung disease during one of his annual 9/11 first responder health screenings, according to the same account. Those screenings exist because of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, first passed by Congress in 2010 to fund federal health monitoring for responders and reauthorized to extend coverage through 2090, according to Kiowa County Press. As of mid-2026, the federal World Trade Center Health Program provided medical monitoring and treatment to nearly 150,000 enrolled first responders and survivors across all 50 states, according to the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Federal program data indicates that hundreds of 9/11 responders and survivors now live in Arizona, using the World Trade Center Health Program's nationwide clinical network to receive specialized care without traveling back to New York, per Kiowa County Press. That infrastructure has become increasingly critical as diagnoses climb: a Washington Post analysis of program records found the number of 9/11 survivors receiving aid for certified cancers roughly tripled, from 8,870 in June 2021 to 27,300 in 2026, according to The Washington Post. By 2026, more than 600 firefighters and emergency responders had died from World Trade Center-related illnesses, nearly double the 343 FDNY members killed at Ground Zero on the day of the attacks, the IAFF reports.
Screenings Credited With Adding Years
Research evaluated through the World Trade Center Health Program found that enrolled responders receiving regular health monitoring lived 35% longer than non-enrolled Lower Manhattan residents of the same age who faced similar toxic exposures, per Kiowa County Press. Salvador has said he stays active in part to avoid survivor's remorse, and he continues giving back to the Arizona community even as he manages his own diagnosis.
Salvador has worked for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for 13 years and currently serves as the detective in charge of executive protection, a role within the office's Investigations Department that handles security, threat assessments and protective operations for county prosecutors and leadership, according to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.
Arizona's Own Ties to Ground Zero
Salvador's story lands in a state with its own institutional connection to the attacks. Arizona Task Force 1, managed by the Phoenix Fire Department, deployed 62 firefighters, police officers and medical personnel to Ground Zero immediately after the 2001 attacks to assist in search and recovery operations, as Hoodline previously reported. The state later dedicated its official 9/11 Memorial at Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza near the State Capitol in Phoenix on the fifth anniversary of the attacks in 2006, featuring an inclined ring etched with statements about that day, according to the Public Art Archive.
Roughly one-third of Americans had not been born by 2026, a reminder of how much time has passed since the towers fell and how the responders who lived through it are aging into new chapters of their health and their service. For Salvador, that has meant carrying both a lung disease diagnosis and a photograph he didn't know existed for more than a year, evidence of a day that, in his own words, has never stopped taking.
