[I AM SECOND PRESENTS]
[I FELT SCARED]
I felt really scared.
I don't belong.
[I DIDN'T KNOW]
I didn't know how I was going to pay the bills.
I had missed it.
[I HAD ENOUGH]
I had had enough fun and it wasn't fun anymore.
[LOST IT]
I completely lost it.
[LIVE]
I just don't know how to live.
[DIE]
I'm gonna die.
[I SURVIVED GUNSHOT, SHARK ATTACK, TWIN TOWERS,
SEX TRAFFICKING, 9/11, DEATH]
I saw the gun.
Sharks, I haven't really been scared of them.
I found myself assigned to the Pentagon.
I found work on the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
I became a prostitute.
I went on a couple calls.
I brought home a nice wad of money.
My "boyfriend" was there
[ANNIE LOBERT, LAS VEGAS]
and I set my purse on the table
and he told me to break myself
and I said, "What did you say to me?"
He said, "Break yourself".
I got in a verbal confrontation
with a guy I played basketball with
[TYRONE FLOWERS, KANSAS CITY]
and I thought it was going to be just that, a verbal confrontation.
[BETHANY HAMILTON]
Halloween of 2003, we were just surfing waiting for waves
and I was kind of sitting out further than everyone else.
September 11, 2001 rolls in.
[SUHO JOHN, WORLD TRADE CENTER]
It's 8:40 in the morning and I'm standing by this fax machine
trying to send some documents out to one of our offices in Philadelphia
when I hear this incredible explosion.
[BRIAN BIRDWELL, THE PENTAGON]
In the morning of September 11,
I'm 7 or 8 steps out when Flight 77 is deliberately crashed into the Pentagon.
He said break yourself and that means give me all your money, dump your purse out on my lap
and I wasn't having it because I was risking my life every night.
It escalated. I threw up my guards thinking we were gonna fight
and he pulled out a 357 magnum.
This plane had just come crashing into the World Trade Center.
The building started shaking violently,
fire breaks out all around us.
We hear an explosion. This is the second plane crashing into the second tower.
I'm thrown around, tossed around like a rag doll inside, set ablaze.
I was burned on 60% of my body
with about 40% being third degree burns.
He choked me in the kitchen
and then drug me out by my hair to the back,
threw me on the porch and then he started kicking me.
This is pimpin' B. I don't know what you thought what time it is but what time it is now is you're gonna pay me whether you like it or not.
Within a split second the shark came and took my arm
and I didn't really have time to think.
I guess the first shot was so deafening,
I don't even recall hearing the trigger being pulled three times.
I come down 81 floors of the North Tower.
I see hundreds of bodies of people that jumped out of the buildings.
I'm trying to reach my wife.
My wife worked on the other tower but cell phones just wouldn't work.
Him and his friends cut all my hair off, stripped me completely nude, spit on me.
You can see flesh hanging off the arms.
My fellow comrades each grab a limb
and go to pick me up but I don't come with them.
They pulled chunks off of me and I begin screaming at them to leave me alone.
I lay there pleading with the Lord
to finish what terrorists had started.
Pleading for the mercy of death.
I just remember getting shot in my shoulder and my neck and my hand.
I guess I was instantly paralyzed
because I didn't feel any pain.
I had lost about 60% of my blood.
I turned back and this is the North Tower collapsing.
I was told I would never walk again.
Told me that I would die
if I was going to work Las Vegas
and mercilessly beat me for hours.
My nose broke, my ribs broke.
Skinned alive, scorched beyond recognition.
I was just praying and trying to stay alive.
I had questions for God like, "Why me?"
And I'm sitting right in the middle
of one of the streets of New York City
wondering, God, for sure my wife is dead.
In 20 plus year of military service,
the hardest thing I've ever been
asked to do is say goodbye to my son.
I've got a tube in every orifice in my body and I mean every.
But I can see him walk in and he just mouths, speaks to me and says, "I love you dad".
And I could sit there and mouth back
to him how much I loved him.
And I'd go home and I would just cry
and I would get in the shower and I would scrub my body
and I would think I'll never, ever be clean.
I knew it was over.
And I saw my family.
I saw my funeral.
And I was in the coffin and everybody was crying
and they were wiping their faces
and they were saying,
"She was just a prostitute."
That's when I said, "Jesus...
please save me.
I don't know if you're real but I don't want to die."
In that moment I was having my 'it is finished' moment.
And as hard as that was,
to physically and emotionally say goodbye to my son,
I think about how difficult it must have been
for God the Father to say goodbye to the Son
for three days.
As I was getting into the ambulance,
there was a local paramedic,
he whispered in my ear and said,
"God will never leave you nor forsake you"
and I think that really just helped me hold it together.
It was the first time I really had
that type of conversation with God.
He just told me, you know,
you're going to go through fiery trials
even if I choose God, but I will give you peace and understanding.
I didn't know if I was going to be able to surf again or not
so that just like helped me just to trust in the Lord
and know that he was just going to
guide me and life will move on.
I had to make one of the hardest decisions in my life.
I would have to forgive the guy that shot me.
It was embarrassing at first because everybody thought I was the weaker person
because I let him do this to me
and didn't get him back.
But it was that peace and with that peace it seemed like God just started lining things up
and it was all out of me being obedient.
I knew God gave me a second chance.
Yes, I was a hooker.
Yes, I was a prostitute.
But no longer.
I'm redeemed.
Dust, smoke, ash, balls of fire
rising out of Ground Zero.
I had now given up hope about my pregnant wife.
My cell phone rings for the very first time that day.
I picked up that call with a lot of fear
think that would be the worst news of my life,
but when I said hello,
it's my wife on the other side.
Her life was spared.
That night, me and my wife,
before we tried to get any sleep,
we knelt down by our bed.
I said, "God, here is a surrendered life. Would you rewrite the story of my life?"
What I've learned is that with God's love and with Christ in you,
you can overcome any obstacle,
any abuse, any hatred,
any challenges in your life,
and able to forgive and continue to love others
like Christ loved you.
I don't look too bad for a guy
that got run over by a 757.
[AFTER ENDURING 39 RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERIES,
BRIAN RAN FOR TEXAS STATE SENATE.]
[HE WON.]
[TYRONE EARNED A LAW DEGREE, STARTED A FAMILY,
AND MENTORS AT-RISK YOUTH IN KANSAS CITY.]
[BETHANY WENT ON TO BECOME ONE OF
AMERICA'S TOP PRO SURFERS.]
[SHE ENCOURAGES AMPUTEES TO LIVE UNSTOPPABLE]
[SUJO STARTED A GLOBAL MOVEMENT TO END MODERN
SLAVERY AND OPERATES SAFE HOUSES ACROSS THE WORLD.]
I feel like going like this.
This is the real me you guys.
I trip out.
[ANNIE RETURNED TO THE LAS VEGAS STRIP]
[NOW TO RESUCE THOSE TRAPPED IN SEX TRAFFICKING.]
My name is Annie Lobert.
My name is Brian Birdwell.
My name is Bethany Hamilton.
My name is Sujo John.
My name is Tyrone Flowers
and I am second.
[I AM SECOND]
[WATCH THEIR COMPLETE FILMS
AT IAMSECOND.COM]
[I SURVIVED GUNSHOT, SHARK ATTACK,
TWIN TOWERS, SEX TRAFFICKING, 9/11, DEATH]
