Yeah. John, can you believe it? Focus on the family. We'll celebrate 50 years of ministry next year. That's really amazing, Jim.
And we know that behind those 50 years, there are countless real-life stories from listeners. Stories about marriages strengthened, babies saved, and even people coming to Christ. Looking back, it's amazing what God has done.
So we want you to give us a call and record your story. Details and the link are in the show notes. 25 years ago, today, terrorists from the Islamic extremist group Al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes and crashed them into high-value American targets, including the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the Twin Towers, located at the World Trade Center in New York City. As you may remember, one valiant group of passengers on hijacked Flight 93 heard about the other attacks, realized their jet would become a weapon, and fought back. They stormed the cockpit, and their plane crashed in an open field in western Pennsylvania.
All 44 people on board died. Today, we're going back to New York City to share the story of one man who started running for his life, like any of us would, when the first tower collapsed. But the Lord stopped me in my tracks. Because all I could hear is that blanket of debris suffocated all noise except for the cries and the screams of people in the darkness. Help me.
I'm hurt. Help me, I can't see. Uh Thanks for joining us for this very special 9-11 edition of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller. John, we certainly have a hero's tale to share with everyone today.
Our guest is Darren Kinder, a former Secret Service agent who served under five U.S. presidents. After 25 years in the Secret Service, Darren stepped away to become an author and speaker, founding an organization called Fierce Faith. Darren and his wife Heather live in Dallas and have four sons. Here now is Darren Kinder speaking at a men's event at Peace Lutheran Church in Grand Island, Nebraska on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
I was in New York City. I was assigned to New York City in the New York Field Office. At that time, it was the largest field office in the country. We were in 7 World Trade Center. It's the third tallest building of the complex.
Seven World Trade Center was about 50 or so Flores was directly across the street from Tower 1, that's the North Tower.
Okay, now everyone knows tower one and tower two. The big ones that dominated the complex and later came down that day. Seven World Trade Center, little known about. Five o'clock or so in the afternoon is the third and last building that collapsed on that day due to fire.
Okay, it caught fire and the firefighters couldn't get to it. And that was my office building.
So I was in the gym. And I was just getting dressed. I just finished exercising, whatever. I was putting on a clean suit. Contrary to popular belief, Secret Service agents do not often wear suits.
We hate it, in fact.
Okay, we're not FBI agents, my goodness. Had to do it, couldn't stop myself. But we had a big meeting that day, a big planning meeting for this huge event that was coming. In a couple weeks to New York City.
So we're all putting on our suits. And at that point, I felt a rumble, felt a little bit of shake, felt the lights flicker a little bit, thought nothing of it, continued to get dressed. And then we're being told to evacuate. Didn't know why, so I ran up one flight of stairs to my desk. Went to my desk, I grabbed every piece of equipment.
That I would not need that day. And I proceeded to leave every piece of equipment at my desk that I would need that day. But I was a young and dumb agent.
Okay, I was only about a year and a half on, about 26, 27 years old. You're going to see that theme a lot here today, young and dumb.
Okay? But we evacuate out and we get to the. We're out on the street, and I'm looking here at the World Trade Center. I'm looking at Bern. Just one plane had hit at this point, and I was angry.
'Cause I knew I knew that wasn't an accident. Student of history, I knew in 1993, Islamic radical terrorists had already tried to destroy the World Trade Center, and I knew that they promised to try again. Just didn't think I'd be there. And so we're looking at it, and we didn't know what to do. And so somebody says, Hey, let's go grab our first aid trauma kits, these huge trauma kits that we have for work.
Let's go grab some of them because all the ambulances are marshaling over there. We'll just take our stuff over there and we'll start doing first aid training.
Okay? Simple, right guys? I can do that. I was trained in that. I can do that.
Nothing crazy, just standard first aid, first responder training. That's uh so I want to leave you this little nugget right now. And that little nugget would be this. Hey guys, sometimes the answer to the problem It's just do the next thing. You hear me?
You don't have to have the big answer. You don't have to know how it's all gonna play out. You don't have to be a genius.
Sometimes addressing a problem, addressing pain, addressing suffering. is simply doing the simple thing that's in front of you. And you're going to see that throughout. My my story here, my experience. And what I would love to see is for you to apply that.
to your daily walk. Do the next thing. The next thing with the rest was grab some stupid first aid kits and start helping people. That's what we started doing, right? I'm working on this woman's arm.
Was badly burned. Just working on her own or focus, smash. I don't know what happened, but a massive explosion just erupted ahead of me, above me. What just happened clearly? The second plane just hit the second tower.
And I am, I'm gonna say, 70, 80 yards from the base of that tower. Maybe a fofio. Crazy close. And if you remember, the second plane came in lower than the first. That's why the second tower was the first one to collapse that day, right?
Remember that? I didn't see a plane, I didn't hear a plane, because I was just so focused on what I was doing. All I know is now that Chunks of metal and rock and steel and jet fuel that's burning is falling all around us, and we just all scatter like ants. And so I find shelter underneath this little portico. And I'm with two other agents, John and Tom.
And uh Tom says, hey. We need to go, we should go across into the World Trade Center, into the lobby and help people get out. Cool, check, let's do that. What's that called? That's called doing the next thing.
That's all we did. Ran across the street, played frogger, got across the street. And we get into the lobby. We found a stairwell that was a steady stream of people that were evacuating out. It was an orderly evacuation.
We found that. We started going up, and they're coming down.
Okay, that's what we're doing.
Now let me be clear. I didn't have the full picture of what was going on here. Let me be very honest. I did not know that two 737s had just slammed into these buildings. Had I known that, I might not have been doing what I did.
So we need to understand that and keep that in perspective, okay? We're going up, they're coming down. We get about to the tenth floor. And there's a woman in the corner. Slumped over.
She was spent. She was overweight. She was physically, you could tell she could not evacuate herself anymore down the steps. What are we gonna do guys? It's going to do the next thing.
And there's a steady stream of people just going by her, not even looking at her. Stop. Take a breath. Look at the problem in the eye and do something about it. And so I just I said, hey.
I told the two guys I was with, you guys keep going. Find somebody else. I'm going to grab her, take her down. That's what we did. They kept going.
I picked her up. We got about two steps, I think about two steps. I took her by myself, and I quickly realized this was a two-man job, right? And I literally grabbed another random dude by the collar and said, hey, you're helping me. And you know what?
He snapped out of it. He's like, oh, oh my gosh, of course I am. Right? All he needed. was one man with a little bit of vision and a little bit of compassion to bring him along.
And so we carried her down the steps. Yeah. Uh we handed her off to a team of paramedics that was at the bottom and uh and then I decided I needed to go back up. I get up to about the 30th floor. And the door was open on this floor, so I said, Oh, maybe somebody's in there.
So I pop my head through the door, I look down the hallway, and I see something, man, I'll never forget. Gives me goosebumps right now. I see the men, the hallway, lined up with New York City firefighters. Beaten and bloodied, and their face was dark with soot and everything, like they had been in a fight. These men had answered the bell.
Man, and I said to them, Kind of funny now. I said, hey, any of y'all seen two Secret Service agents running around? And actually, they're like, yeah, we did actually. I was like, hold on, are you kidding? Which way did they go?
They said, I have no idea. All right, so I had a decision to make, right? Had no way to communicate with them, what am I going to do? I decided I was going back down. I'm gonna hike the 30 floors back.
The towers, by the way, I think were 110 levels each. I said, I'm going back down. And so, as I'm walking through that doorway to go down to the stairwell, I'll hear words I'll never forget. I hear their fire commander say this. Boys Grab your gear.
We're going back up. Grab your gear, we're going back up. Ding. Time to answer the bell.
Now here's what makes those men so special. Here's what makes them better than me. They knew the situation. I was ignorant of the totality of it. They knew exactly what they were going into, and they went up anyway.
God bless them. I will forever Do everything I can to honor and respect. The men and women of the fire department and the first responders in law enforcement that day who die. I have no way of knowing. I can only assume those men are part of the three hundred and forty three New York City firefighters who died that day.
Men who answered the call. who ran to the guns, Knowing the circumstances, And they answered the bell anyways. What's my excuse? What's your excuse? Right?
Powerful men. But I was going back down. I get to the lobby. I said, do you know what I said to myself? I said, self.
You know what a good idea? A good idea would be to call your wife right now. Why not? And so I saw a bank of payphones. You guys remember those?
Remember those guys? If you're under the age of 20, Google that. Or ask the, not right now, it's rude, but ask the guy with the beard next to you: what's a payphone, daddy? All right, anyway, I had a payphone. I called my wife, I called her collect.
Well Yeah. Yeah again, Google that. I speak to high school kids sometimes and they're like, what is he talking about? I called her collect and I said, hey. I'm in the lobby of the World Trade Center.
I'm helping people get out. I am okay. I love you. I love you too. Goodbye.
Now She doesn't know that the second I hung up that phone, I decided to go outside the complex. and look for my guys. Look for another group of my guys. All she knows is that thirteen minutes later, And I know from the phone records, the collect call. 13 minutes later, she's watching on live TV, the tower collapse.
And the last thing I told her was I'm in the lobby of the World Church Center. In that 13 minutes, she had called my parents and her parents, my brother, and her brother, all of our friends, and they all watched me die. On live TV. But I wasn't in there, was I? I was standing about mid-block near church in Vesey Street talking to a police officer, and I heard a high-pitched metal-on-metal screeching sound.
I said, what is that? I turn up and I look.
Now look at the top of tower two. Which I'm about Again, maybe 80 yards to the base of. That's called danger close guys I see the top of Tower 2 buckle and start to collapse. The first thought in my mind was I'm dead. Second thought in my mind, which I now attribute to the Holy Spirit, was run.
I'm a man who listens to the Holy Spirit. And I ran. I ran fast. I used to be fast. But I wasn't fast enough, right?
So as I'm running, I hear the Pancaking floors, one on top of each other, each one getting louder, each one getting closer, death literally falling from the sky. Large chunks of debris falling all around me just as. That cloud was about to take me.
Now, in those seconds, these are all seconds. I see a fire truck that I should slide under. I'm going to get under for cover. I take a step in that direction, and I kept going straight. And then as I'm rounding a corner, There's a coffee cart and a donut cart.
This is about 20 feet from the fire truck. I'm like. I should get under there for cover. I think about it and then I keep going. And then moments later, as that debris falling all around me, just day became night.
That beautiful, clear, blue September day became night, and my eyes, my nose, everything was filled with pulverized concrete and dust and debris. And I'm still running because stuff is still fall. It sounded like cars falling out of the sky, guys. Crazy. Within a few seconds later, I'm out of the danger zone.
There's nothing falling around me, so I start to walk. And I see Praise God. I see. The Sunlight out of the corner of my left eye. I'm like, sweet.
I am out of here. I'm going to go to the light. And so I walked across the street. I realized I'm looking north up of a very narrow alley. At the end of that other alley is sunlight.
Go out right But the Lord stopped me in my tracks. Because all I could hear is that blanket of debris suffocated all noise except for the cries and the screams of people in the darkness. Help me. I'm hurt. Help me, I can't see.
What are you gonna do? And do the next thing. Answer the bell. And I just stood, I didn't know what I was doing. I just stood in the mouth of that alley and I yelled at the top of my voice: follow the sound of my voice.
Follow the sound of my voice. There's light this way. Come to the light. Come to the light. Follow the light, brothers.
You see where I'm going. I wasn't thinking it at the time, but do you see this is the beautiful? Spiritual illustration that this is. And as they made their way to me, I would shoot them up the alley, go to the light, go to the light. I don't know, 10, 12, maybe 15 people made their way to me in that time.
Eventually I turn around. I see there's no more dark, there's no more light. What am I going to do now? A lot of crazy stuff happens. I'll skip through some of it.
In between the two collapses of the towers, I picked up a woman whose femur was sticking out of her leg. A man brought a shopping cart to me. We put her in our shopping cart and took her to an ambulance. It's crazy, right? I saw a man stagger across the street and just get creamed by a By an ambulance that was trying to get to the scene quickly.
Just madness. I don't know. I don't remember making the decision. Again, young and dumb, but I'm on the same corner basically of the same intersection where I was before. And I heard a high-pitched metal-on-metal screeching sound.
And I said, no, no, no, no, no, I've heard that. I don't need to stop and look. I'm gone. And just seconds after I started running, I heard it again. Pancaking other floors.
Uh And now I hear that freight train. Coming to get me, right? And I take a right and I throw my shoulder into a revolving door. I land on my back. I'm in the middle of a bank, apparently, right as that cloud goes by.
I'm breathing heavy. I'm looking up at the ceiling of this bank, and I hear someone say my last name. Kinder? What are you doing here? My guys.
Right? Can you imagine the relief? I rolled over, I looked, and saw Two dudes that I work with. Two colleagues of mine, two different guys. Winded my sales, guys.
Winded my sales. Got up, dusted myself off. We came up with a plan. We waited 10 minutes for that cloud to dissipate, and then we created a search party and we went out back into that intersection. My whole experience happens in this one intersection of Church and Vesti Street.
And we started looking for people to help. Unfortunately, all we found were bodies. That's just the truth. The Lord put me all this on my knees in that intersection. I looked across the intersection at that fire truck.
Remember that fire truck I was going to get under? Boom, the completely obliterated flat on the ground, the wheels were bent out. Then I turned the corner, I looked for that little coffee cart I was going to try to get under, couldn't find it. There was so much destruction. In that intersection.
Was one fire truck, and this is the, if it wasn't such an awful circumstance, it could be kind of funny. The image, just think about it. There's one fire truck in the intersection that's not damaged. I have no idea how. And one of the knuckleheads I was with Said, hey, we would do pretty good here if we could get the water coming out of that hose and start putting out all these fires around us because everything was on fire, guys.
Gas tanks are popping off. Police cars burning up. There's office paper everywhere, it's all on fire. We don't know anything about fire hoses and fire trucks. Force multiplier, right?
The other guy, the third guy says, Well, I was a volunteer firefighter in high school. I bet I could remember. I said, okay, you get, I'll hold this. You guys, yeah.
Next thing, I mean, I'm serious. Within a minute, water's coming out of this hose. And they come join me. It's not as easy as it looks. There's any firefighters in here?
They come join me. And for the next, it felt like an hour. I bet it was 20, 25 minutes. I don't know. We just dominated that intersection.
Putting out car fires. That's all we did. What's that called? Just doing the next thing. We weren't solving the world's problems.
But we were bringing a little little relief to that little sphere of our life. Together with brothers. That's what we need to do.
Now People say, man, weren't you afraid? Weren't you terrified? Of course I was. Of course I. How'd you do this?
You're so brave and everything.
Well, number one, did I mention young and dumb? And number two, You know what? I have found, and the Lord really revealed it to me that day, I have found the secret to fear. Love is greater than fear. Period.
Jesus is where fear goes to die. A Man. All the other, we're sitting there fighting fires. And then I looked around, and there were like professional firefighters everywhere now. Like they had finally made their way to the scene from all over the city.
The ones that were there initially were gone, right? And I'm like, ooh, guys, I think we're in the way.
So we kind of shrunk back and we did some other things. But at the end of the day, We found out. All of our office had relocated. They had been moved three times because all of our relocation points kept getting destroyed.
So we found about 30 blocks north, we heard, okay. Let's go uh right on the uh Hudson River. And so we got one guy's car. We had picked up another agent at this point, so there's four of us. Uh we get there.
Walk in, get some basic medical attention, right? Oxygen, they flushing everything out and everything, and cuts and bruises, whatever. Fast forward through a few things, quick to little debrief, and then I end up getting on a police boat and riding a police boat back to Hoboken, New Jersey, right across the river. You walked out of my apartment and walked two blocks to the river, you can see the World Trade Center. That's where I lived.
Okay. I ride a police boat across. The great exodus from Manhattan Island that day, most of it was done by boat. And I get across, and I lost my keys at some point, and so I walk through town a little bit, and people are looking at me like I'm a zombie. And I walk up the flights of steps, I knock on the door, and my wife opens the door.
Yeah. You talk about an embrace. Let me go back on the story. That I skipped on purpose. When we got up to the rendezvous point, we go in there, and I go in there, and we looked-I mean, we look awful.
We look destroyed, right? And on one side, there's guys like me, they look like me. They look all torn up and beat up, and we're giving each other a nod, thumbs up, hey, brother, all this kind of stuff, right? And then I looked. And I'll never forget it.
I looked on the other side of the room. And I saw another group of co-workers. People that I've served with, people that I've worked with. Yeah. In clean suits.
Shiny shoes. Perfect hair. And they're looking across at this group. And I can tell they're looking at us going. Where have you been?
Right? And we're looking across at that group. And what are we thinking? Same question. Where have you been?
You can answer the bell, or you cannot answer the bell. But I decided that night I decided in that night, man. Tao is not going to die in a clean suit. I decided that night when my days are done and my numbers punched, boom. And we don't know when that's coming, by the way, again, on the house, free tip.
I decided I wasn't punching out of this world in a clean suit.
So there's my third challenge for you guys, if it's not up there already. Kid? your suit Dirty. Find the valiant purpose that you were made for. Find the problem that you were made and created to address.
Because trust me, you were. Getting your suit dirty is walking in the good works that God has placed before you beforehand. Each one of you Are designed with unique skills, abilities, and talents to address a problem in this world. I want you to get your suit dirty doing it. You ain't here by accident.
You are born, men. In this room, you are born for this time, for this place. for action right now. Because he has a purpose for you. And there is no safer place.
To be. God's will. Is your purpose? I just want you to get your suit dirty doing it. It starts by being the man.
standing in the alley, pointing people to Jesus. Mm-hmm. We do it by being driven not by fear, but by love. And we spend the rest of our days and getting our suit dirty. And with those words of wisdom, we've come to the end of this dynamic presentation from former Secret Service agent Darren Kinder on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Wow, I mean, what an awesome illustration of how men of God should behave in a crisis by getting their suits dirty, as Darren said. And women, too. I know there are capable women in Secret Service as well. We all can be God's hands and feet in our troubled world today, and boy, does the world need us. And I hope Darren's message has inspired you to look for opportunities to be that kind of help.
I should note that Darren earned the Secret Service Medal of Valor for his actions on 9-11, a day when nearly 3,000 people died, including over 400 first responders, 350 of which were New York City firefighters. God bless them and their families. I can't imagine the tremendous vacuum those deaths left in that community. And in the 25 years. Since 9-11, more than 4,000 people have died from cancer and respiratory issues due to toxic exposure that occurred after the event, mostly at ground zero.
And of course, the events of 9-11 led directly to the global war on terror and the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.
So we also want to thank all of our military families for their service, sometimes making that ultimate sacrifice in the brutal years that followed. And if you need to talk to someone about this topic, maybe you've lost a loved one, please give us a call. We have a great team of caring Christian counselors who would be honored. To call you back and listen to your story and provide help. I'd also recommend that you get a copy of Darren Kinder's book.
It's called Bury Me in a Dirty Suit: Discovering Man's Valiant Purpose in the Aftermath of 9-11. And through his own story and biblical insight, Darren challenges men to live boldly and answer God's call on their lives. Get your copy from us here at Focus on the Family for a donation of any amount, and we'll also include a free audio download of Darren's message with quite a bit of extra content. We'd also like to encourage you with a free audio collection called Enduring the Challenges of Life. You'll hear how to navigate dark times from Dr.
Tim Keller, Dr. Larry Crabb, Johnny Erickson Tata, and more. The collection includes today's presentation from Darren. Just visit our website to get access. Yeah, you'll find that collection, and you can record.
Request your copy of Bury Me in a Dirty Suit when you visit our website. The links are in the show notes. Or give us a call to speak with one of our counselors. That number is 800, the letter A and the word family.
Well, join us again on Monday when One Wife shares some very practical advice to improve your marriage. And learning how to communicate to your husband because There were things that weren't getting done. I mean, nagging, we come by nagging honestly because it's not happening and we're frustrated.
So sitting down and saying, How can we deal with this? Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Please take a moment and leave a rating for us in your podcast app and then share this episode with a friend who might need some encouragement to persevere in life. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back next time as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. John, can you believe it?
Focus on the family. We'll celebrate 50 years of ministry next year. That's really amazing, Jim. And we know that behind those 50 years, there are countless real-life stories from listeners. Stories about marriages strengthened, babies saved, and even people coming to Christ.
Looking back, it's amazing what God has done.
So we want you to give us a call and record your story. Details and the link are in the show notes.
