Melissa Doi

Melissa Cándida Doi (September 1, 1969 – September 11, 2001) was an American senior manager at IQ Financial Systems, who died in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Doi is known for the recording of a 9-1-1 call she made during her final moments inside the South Tower, as it was engulfed in flames. Her emotional conversation with an emergency dispatcher was used during the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only criminal trial to result from the attacks.

Melissa Cándida Doi was born on September 1, 1969 in the Bronx, New York, to Evelyn Alderete. Doi was an only child, and was raised by her single mother in East Harlem. Doi's father was of Japanese ancestry, while her mother was of Puerto Rican descent. Doi had a close relationship with her mother's family.

In 1987, Doi graduated from the Spence School, an all-girl's school in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Later that year, she enrolled in Northwestern University, where she graduated in 1991 with a sociology degree. She was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. Doi was said to have "loved" Northwestern, and was looking forward to a class reunion shortly before she was killed.

After graduation, Doi worked in public relations. In the mid-1990s, she joined IQ Financial Systems, a banking software company. Doi had played a role in starting the company. Doi was considered an attentive and understanding manager, and journalist Scott Pelley said she was remembered as charismatic and attractive.

Doi's passions included music and painting. A close friend described her as "incredibly physical". At college, she had ambitions to become a ballet dancer, but she enjoyed all kinds of dancing. Doi was also an avid in-line skater, and was known to have purchased rollerblades for children in Throgg's Neck, who she taught to skate.

Doi had a close relationship with her mother Evelyn, and they lived together at a condominium Doi purchased in Throgg's Neck, a traditionally German, Irish and Italian neighborhood in the Bronx. Prior to moving to Throgg's Neck, they had lived together in a heavily Puerto Rican neighborhood in East Harlem.

Doi was never married, and had no children at the time of her death.

On September 11th, the South Tower was hit by United Airlines Flight 175 at 9:03 a.m. Doi and five other people were trapped on the 83rd floor, where IQ Financial Systems was located. The plane entered the building two floors below Doi and her colleagues, and part of the right wing of the aircraft had ripped through the floor they were on.

Melissa Doi made an emergency call from the 83rd floor of the South Tower at 9:17 a.m. During the call, the operator tries to keep Doi calm and extract information from her. Doi complains of having trouble breathing, and the intense heat coming from the floor, and asks the operator if anyone is coming to rescue her. At the time, Battalion Chief Orio Palmer and several other firefighters were rising toward Doi, having made it to the 78th floor. Doi describes hearing voices, which she assumes are her rescuers, however it is unclear what she heard. According to Scott Pelley, it is plausible that she heard Chief Orio Palmer and the men who accompanied him in a nearby stairwell.

Doi asks the dispatcher, "Can you stay on the line with me, please? I feel like I'm dying." The dispatcher urges Doi to keep breathing and praying, and reassures her she will be rescued.

Near the end of the call, Doi spells out the last name of her mother and asks the dispatcher to set up a three-way call so that she can speak to her mother one last time. However, the dispatcher tells Doi that she is unable to make 3-way calls.

As smoke and heat begin to overcome her, Doi gives the 911 operator her mother's name and phone number in hopes of passing on a last message: “Tell her...that she was the best mother a person could have, and that I love her with all my heart and soul, and that I'll see her in the next world.”

After 24+1⁄2 minutes, the call cuts off. At 9:58 a.m., the floors directly below Doi buckled, and the South Tower collapsed. It took three years for Doi's remains to be found in the rubble.

On August 16, 2006, the New York City Fire Department, acting under a court order, released the audiotape of Doi's call to the emergency dispatch. Doi's recording was played during the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

Analysis of 9-1-1 call

In 2013, an analysis of emergency phone calls made from the World Trade Center was published in the Omega journal. Author M. Sara Rosenthal, a bioethicist, focused heavily on Melissa Doi's experience. The study concluded that emergency dispatchers had done a poor job of handling emergency phone calls placed by South Tower victims. Because the dispatcher untruthfuly insisted that Doi would be rescued, Doi's suffering was increased, and she became increasingly agitated by the ignorance and the dishonesty of the emergency dispatcher. Another 9/11 victim, Kevin Cosgrove, had a similar experience.

Rosenthal notes that the established literature on end-of-life experiences has suggested that people who are dying want to be told the truth, and that they do not want to feel isolated or abandoned. Studies have shown that false reassurance can hinder the victim's ability to accept their fate, or to end their call with emergency dispatchers and contact loved ones, both of which are palliative. This leads trapped and dying people to “die deaths they deplore in locations they despise".

Some 9/11 victims had qualitatively better death experiences, because they called their friends and family members, rather than emergency dispatchers. Melissa Doi's emergency dispatcher was also clearly traumatized once it became obvious that she could not be saved. There is currently no standardized training for emergency dispatchers to handle end-of-life experiences, and very little attention has been paid to providing better training since 9/11. Most funding has gone to improving communications technology.

The Spence School has established the Melissa Candida Doi '87 Scholarship Fund, in memory of Melissa Doi. The endowment provides a four-year scholarship to deserving Spence students. Another scholarship, the Melissa Doi Memorial Scholarship was established and fully endowed by the Sigma chapter of the Delta Gamma fraternity, which Melissa had joined at Northwestern University. It has been awarded since 2007.

Doi is memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-46 of the National September 11 Memorial. She is also memorialized at 10 other locations in the United States, including the Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden.

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum hosts several of Melissa Doi's personal belongings, including her artwork, and her rollerblades. Oral histories related to Doi are also stored there.

• Pelley, S. (2019). Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times. Harlequin. ISBN 978-1-4880-5362-7. Retrieved 2023-11-11.
• Zuckoff, M. (2019). Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-227566-0. Retrieved 2023-11-12.