A quick decision saved Lisa Lee’s life on Sept. 11, 2001

Published 12:01 am Sunday, September 11, 2011

Since her escape from the 19th floor of One World Trade Center, Lisa Lee has often thought about snap decisions.

The 1982 graduate of Mariner High School lives in Chicago. In 2007, she shared her 9/11 account with Herald readers. She joined co-workers in a harrowing walk down the North Tower stairs.

She thinks about “little mundane decisions that made such a big difference — the people who were late for work that day, or the decisions you made in the first five minutes.”

On May 3 she was interviewed again by The Herald after Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. raid in Pakistan. “I definitely think justice was served,” she said.

Lee, whose name was Lisa Bartholomew during her school years in Snohomish County, said in May she was amazed it had been nearly 10 years since the attacks. She remembered her company’s president, a woman, making a lifesaving choice.

In 2001, Lee worked in the tower for a division of Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. She said in 2007 that the president firmly commanded workers to “go out and go down the stairs,” even though smoke filled the hall. As they descended, smoke thickened. Some in her group wanted to go back up, but they kept going down. They saw firefighters climbing the stairs.

Lee said in May that being a 9/11 survivor “comes up occasionally in conversation.”

“I don’t see it as a private thing,” she said. “Absolutely everybody here in this country experienced it in one way or another. People were deeply affected by it, whatever connection they had.”

She travels frequently and isn’t bothered by flying. “I don’t think I have residual fear,” Lee said in May. She does have residual compassion.

“When things occur in the world, I look at that from a different perspective,” Lee said. “I’m feeling empathy for people who are in the midst of a crisis or a disaster, whether it’s manmade or natural.”