They were just shoes.

Black Nine West slingback heels.

Joanne Capestro had put them on that Tuesday morning for the same reason millions of people put on a pair of shoes before work.

They matched what she was wearing.

Nothing more.

She could never have imagined that those shoes would one day sit behind glass in a museum.

Or that people would look at them and ask the same question:

How did she make it down 87 floors wearing those?

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Joanne was 39 years old and working for May Davis Group in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Her office was on the 87th floor.

At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 struck the tower above her.

The building shook.

Joanne smelled jet fuel.

Ceiling material fell.

Glass shattered.

The ordinary workday disappeared in seconds.

There was only one thing left to do.

Get out.

Joanne and her coworkers found a usable stairwell and began moving downward.

She was still wearing the heels.

Years later, Joanne remembered what people thought when they saw her shoes.

They didn't believe she would make it.

But she kept going.

In a 2026 interview at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, Joanne recalled the disbelief over those heels—and the simple fact that answered it:

She did get out.

With the heels on.

The staircase was crowded with people trying to escape.

Joanne moved with them.

Down one flight.

Around the landing.

Down another.

Again.

Again.

Again.

There was no shortcut from the 87th floor.

There was no elevator carrying her dozens of floors in seconds.

The enormous height of the World Trade Center had suddenly become something physical.

Something Joanne had to cross with her own feet.

87.

88.

89.

90.

Every number meant she was getting closer to the street.

But the street was still far away.

Then Joanne began seeing people moving in the opposite direction.

Firefighters.

While she and the other office workers descended, firefighters climbed upward toward the damaged floors.

Joanne would remember their faces.

The people escaping had one objective:

Down.

The rescuers had another:

Up.

For a few seconds at a time, their paths crossed on the stairs.

Then they continued in opposite directions.

The firefighters disappeared above her.

Joanne continued toward the street.

Her black heels kept hitting the stairs.

Floor after floor.

One of the people descending from May Davis Group was Harry Ramos.

Harry wasn't simply another stranger in the staircase.

He was Joanne's coworker.

He was the head trader at May Davis Group, the firm occupying space on the 87th floor. Contemporary profiles describe him as someone who helped lead coworkers toward safety that morning.

Harry had a family waiting for him.

He had a wife.

He had children.

Only one week earlier, he had taken his five-year-old son Eugene to his first day of school.

Now Harry was trying to get out of the North Tower.

Like Joanne.

They descended.

But Harry's journey would not end where Joanne's did.

Somewhere during the evacuation, Harry encountered other people who were struggling to get out.

One of them was a man who could no longer continue without assistance.

Harry stopped to help.

Joanne continued downward.

Accounts published years later place their separation around the lower portion of the tower, with Joanne remembering the expectation that they would meet outside.

It would have seemed like the most ordinary assumption imaginable.

Get downstairs.

Get outside.

Find each other.

Except nothing about that morning was ordinary anymore.

Joanne kept descending.

Harry stayed behind to help.

She did not know she was leaving him for the last time.

The stairs continued.

Joanne's legs carried her farther down the tower.

The black heels remained on her feet.

In later years, people would focus on the shoes because they were such an ordinary object in such an extraordinary circumstance.

A pair of work shoes.

Nothing designed for evacuation.

Nothing designed for disaster.

Yet they kept going.

Joanne eventually reached the lower levels.

She had descended from the 87th floor in approximately 20 minutes, according to her recent account.

Then she reached the concourse.

After dozens upon dozens of flights of stairs, she was almost outside.

Almost.

What waited below was different from the world Joanne had entered that morning.

Debris.

Emergency personnel.

People trying to understand what had happened.

And above them, two towers were now burning.

At 9:03 a.m., while Joanne's evacuation was unfolding, United Airlines Flight 175 had struck the South Tower.

The disaster was no longer confined to the building she was trying to escape.

Both towers had been hit.

Joanne continued toward the exit.

Then she finally reached the street.

After starting her morning on the 87th floor of the North Tower, Joanne Capestro was standing outside.

She had made it.

But almost immediately, she heard something.

A roar.

Joanne looked up.

The South Tower was collapsing.

There was no time to stand there and understand what was happening.

She ran.

A priest grabbed her and pushed her beneath a vehicle for protection, Joanne recalled in her 2026 interview.

Then the dust came.

The street disappeared.

The sky disappeared.

Everything around her turned gray.

Eventually, Joanne opened her eyes.

She was alive.

The shoes were still part of the story.

But Harry Ramos was not standing outside waiting for her.

Harry never escaped the North Tower.

He was killed when the tower collapsed.

For Joanne, surviving meant eventually having to live with that knowledge.

The 9/11 Memorial & Museum notes that in the months after the attacks, Joanne struggled with grief over Harry's death as well as survivor guilt and trauma.

Years passed.

The shoes remained.

Joanne kept them.

And eventually she made a decision.

The ordinary black heels that had carried her down 87 floors should not remain ordinary shoes in a closet.

She donated them to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Today, they sit behind glass.

The black has faded with time.

Visitors pass them without hearing the sound they once made against 87 floors of stairs.

But Joanne knows exactly where they carried her.

And when she donated another surviving object from that morning—her recovered World Trade Center identification card—the museum recorded the credit line with five words that explain why Harry remained part of her story:

“In memory of Harry Ramos.”

Harry stopped to help someone.

Joanne kept going.

One survived.

One didn't.

And more than two decades later, a pair of faded high heels still tells part of what happened between the 87th floor and the street.

But Joanne's escape had produced another surviving object.

One she never expected to see again.

Her World Trade Center ID card had been lost in the chaos.

After the towers were gone, someone found it at Ground Zero.

And somehow, Joanne's face was still visible.

— End of Chapter 3 —

Next: Chapter 4 — The Man Who Stayed Behind