From Wall Street to TSA. How one phone call changed a man’s life.

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    BALTIMORE (WJZ) — If Thomas Batillo’s son had not called him before his meeting at the World Trade Center 23 years ago, he likely would not be here today.

Batillo is now the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Assistant Federal Security Director for Mission Support at Baltimore Washington International (BWI) Airport.

TSA was created in the aftermath of 9/11 to protect our country from future terrorist attacks and for Thomas Batillo, his decision to join was personal.

“It was a day like any other day,” Batillo said.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Thomas Batillo, a trader of the New York Stock Exchange at the time, was on his way to a meeting on the top floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center.

He was about to walk into the building when his phone rang.

“It was my son. He just wanted to tell me a quick story about where he was going on a field trip that day,” Batillo said. “As I was talking to him the first jet went right over my head and right into the north tower.”

A few minutes later, Batillo saw the second plane hit the south tower.

“Now we know that this is not an accident, that something is wrong,” Batillo said.

He ran back to the New York Stock Exchange for safety then the buildings collapsed.

“It sounded like an earthquake, and it felt like an earthquake, the whole place was shaking,” he recalled.

A cloud of ash, smoke, dust, and debris engulfed the streets outside.

Batillo made it back to his family later that night but nearly 3,000 people would never make it home.

“The people that I was supposed to meet of course didn’t make it because they were above where the plane went in. A lot of funerals with no bodies, a lot of memorials with no closure,” Batillo said.

The experience changed him. When he eventually retired from Wall Street, Batillo decided to join the Transportation Security Administration.

“It does bring a little closure, to know that all of these great people that are here are preventing something like that from happening again…that’s how you kind of deal with it,” Batillo explained. “To make sure it will never happen again.”

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