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Will Jimeno's 9/11 mission: 'Save the people, simple as that'

MIAMI — "History has shown that we pass stories down through generations and film has become a kind of historical documentation," says Will Jimeno.

Now, Jimeno's story is being immortalized for history in the new Oliver Stone film, "World Trade Center."

Paramount Pictures Read reviews of "World Trade Center."

Along with his sergeant, John McLoughlin, Jimeno was one of only two people who survived being trapped in the rubble of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

"This film — whether it does good or does not do good — that's not important," says Jimeno, 38, now a retired Port Authority policeman and a technical advisor for the film with McLoughlin.

"I'll tell you what's important, 20, 30 or 40 years from now, when people say, 'What happened on 9/11?' They'll go back to this and say, 'Wow, some good came out of the bad.' All we've seen is the negative. It's time to see the positive. That's why I love this movie. They didn't show the towers falling. I'm tired of seeing towers falling."

Jimeno, born in Colombia, immigrated to the United States at the age of 2, growing up in Hackensack, N.J. After a four-year tour with the Navy, he studied criminal justice and joined the Port Authority police in January 2001, sworn in at a ceremony inside the World Trade Center. Eight months later, when McLoughlin asked for volunteers to go into the building and help evacuate it, Jimeno stepped forward.

What was going through his mind at that moment? "Save the people, it's as simple as that," Jimeno says without hesitation. "I still apologize to this day to (his then-pregnant wife) Allison for not thinking about her, but I think as a police officer. If we stopped to think about ourselves, there would be a lot of people who wouldn't trust police officers. Our job is to protect and serve. I happened to step forward. I think a true police officer would, that's why you wear the shield."

Still, Jimeno minimizes the hero status the film accords him.

"If you look at the poster, look at how insignificant those two people are, look at how big those towers are," he says. "We are here today because of the love, the dedication, the courage of all those who came to get us. We are only vehicles. We didn't know until the following spring that we were the only two guys to survive among the rubble. We were too busy rehabbing, trying to fight real hard. When they told us that, it broke our hearts."

Jimeno was adamant that the story of his rescue not be given a political spin. "John and I would not be part of anything political, any type of agenda. I'm telling you right out, Hollywood can pay us whatever they want and we would never do that," he says. "Because it's about honor, it's about courage, it's about survival. If we don't learn to put all that materialistic stuff to the side and deal with it as human beings, this world's going down the drain.

"Because I go back to Edmund Burke's quote — the British philosopher — 'All that evil needs to conquer is for good men and women to stand by and do nothing.' Well, 9/11 showed that good men and women are here today and have been since the Spain bombing and the British bombing and the India bombing. People stop everything to (go) into a violent atmosphere to help their fellow human beings. That's the important message overall in the film."

Initially skeptical of how Hollywood would portray the events he lived through, Jimeno is now one of Oliver Stone's biggest fans. "I told him, 'If you're not going to do this right, don't do it at all.'"

Jimeno instinctively felt a confidence in and kinship with Stone. "I keep telling people that I trusted Oliver because I was in the military, he was in the military. People kind of forget that he served in Vietnam and was highly decorated. I didn't see combat in the Navy, I saw combat in downtown Manhattan," he says. "People that have been in a situation where they lose comrades, there's a common denominator there.

"As someone who has never been involved with any film project in my life, I was wondering how do they take the truth and translate that onto the screen," says Jimeno.

"Oliver gave me his word personally that he was going to do it right. He did it right."