In her final interview before her death from stomach cancer in 2015 at age 42, Borders admitted she became an alcoholic and crack cocaine addict in the years following 9/11. Her addiction became so devastating, she revealed, her children were taken away from her.
“Alcohol would make me numb,” she said, “and the more I drank the more numb I became, and it helped me forget being trapped in the tower, and looking at that photograph.”
But remarkably, Borders said the killing of Osama bin Laden – the man she called her “worst fear” – while she was in rehab helped her get and stay sober. She even got back her beloved children, Noelle, then 18, and Zayden, then 3.
Borders had been working at Bank of America for just one month and was running late that morning when she finally reached her desk in the doomed North Tower.
“That was when the plane hit. That’s when the building started quaking and swaying. I lost all control, and I went into a frenzy,” she said. “I fought my way out of that place.”