Annabel Quintero was 25 years old and working in a Wall Street office in New York City on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center's North Tower shook so violently it felt, in her words, like being thrown around like a rag doll. She was on the 46th floor when the building rumbled, and within minutes she found herself descending a stairwell crowded with strangers, firefighters climbing past her in the opposite direction, trying to reach the street before the tower came down.
Quintero, who now lives in West Seattle, escaped the North Tower by walking down its stairs as firefighters ascended around her, according to KIRO 7 News. A facilities worker told her that another plane had struck the second tower, and by the time she reached about the 33rd floor, the scale of what was happening had started to sink in. When she finally reached a clear viewpoint outside, she saw that only one of the twin towers was still standing.
A paramedic helped move her across the street to a cab, according to the same report, and her father encouraged her to fly back home to Seattle in the aftermath. The trip back to the Pacific Northwest marked the beginning of a long, uneven road toward healing — one that would eventually take her back into rooms full of people, telling her story out loud.
A Flashback, Decades Later
Quintero's return to public life with her story wasn't without its costs. She had a flashback while speaking about September 11 at a 2018 event, according to KIRO 7 News Seattle, the kind of moment that underscored how far the trauma had followed her, even 17 years on. That same year, she ran for public office, campaigning as a Democratic candidate for the Washington State Senate seat representing District 34 — the legislative district covering West Seattle, Vashon Island, and parts of Burien — according to Ballotpedia.
Her ties to the community run deeper still. Before she ever set foot in a Wall Street office, Quintero was active in Seattle's 1990s hip-hop scene, co-creating the female-focused event Invasion of the Bgirls and later developing the cultural history program Mambo 2 Hip Hop, according to All American Speakers Bureau. She also holds two degrees from the University of Washington: a bachelor's in political science earned in 1997 and a master's in education policy and organizational leadership completed in 2017, per the same bureau's profile.
Turning Recovery Into a Book — and a Business
In the years after 9/11, Quintero said the day changed everything, and she carried lingering fear that resurfaced in unexpected ways — she once ran outside after hearing fighter jets overhead, convinced another attack was underway, as reported by KIRO 7 News Seattle. She turned to a Vipassana meditation center in Washington as part of her healing, and eventually began writing about what she'd survived during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That writing became her memoir, Step Step Jump: Transforming Trauma to Triumph from the 46th Floor, according to Goodreads. Quintero has said she hopes the book helps readers find part of themselves even on their worst day, and she has gone on to help other people tell their own stories. She also advocates for ending wars so people don't have to spend decades recovering from them, per KIRO 7's report.
She has since built that personal reckoning into a career. Quintero founded The Runa Group, an executive coaching firm where she works in executive leadership coaching and storytelling, according to All American Speakers Bureau.
Why Some Floors Emptied and Others Didn't
Quintero's escape from the 46th floor was part of the broader evacuation examined by federal investigators with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who studied evacuation and occupant behavior at the World Trade Center.
What the Research Changed
According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, its World Trade Center investigation included interviews with 1,056 surviving occupants and 116 emergency responders. NIST made 31 recommendations for improvements to building and fire codes, standards and practices, and the agency says those recommendations helped drive later updates involving occupant evacuation and emergency-responder communications. For local high-rise fire preparedness, the Seattle Fire Department advises residents and workers to use a stairwell rather than an elevator when it is safe to do so, and to shelter in place if smoke blocks the exit or the stairs cannot be used. The department offered that guidance as a fire-safety reminder after a separate January 9, 2022, fire in a New York City apartment building killed 17 people, including eight children.
Getting out was still far from simple. The broader evacuation research considered stairwell movement, occupant behavior and the conditions that shaped people's decisions during the disaster. Quintero's descent was one experience within that larger, difficult evacuation.
A Seattle Chapter
Quintero's story now connects a New York survival account with the life and work she has built in Seattle, including her memoir, leadership coaching and efforts to help others tell their stories.
