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 a Stateside Puerto Rican.

Doi had a close relationship with her mother's family.

At the time, Battalion Chief Orio Palmer and several other firefighters were rising toward Doi, having made it to the 78th floor.

Doi described hearing voices, which she assumed were 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 asked the dispatcher, "Can you stay on the line with me, please? I feel like I'm dying."

The dispatcher urged Doi to keep breathing and praying, and reassured her that she would be rescued.

Near the end of the call, Doi spelled out the last name of her mother and asked the dispatcher to set up a three-way call so that she could speak to her mother one last time.

However, the dispatcher told Doi that she was unable to make the call.

As smoke and heat began to overcome her, Doi gave 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 cut 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.

The plane entered the building two floors below Doi and her colleagues, and part of the right wing of the aircraft had ripped in to the 83rd floor, where Doi's office was located.

Melissa Doi made an emergency call from the 83rd floor of the South Tower at 9:17 a.m. During the call, the operator tried to keep Doi calm and extract information from her.

Doi complained of having trouble breathing, and the intense heat coming from the floor, and asked the operator if anyone was coming to rescue her.

In 1987, Doi graduated from the Spence School, an all-girl's school in Manhattan's Upper East Side.

In the mid-1990s, she joined IQ Financial Systems, a banking software company, where she was emplpyed as a business development manager.

Doi had played a role in starting the company.

Doi would regularly travel abroad to implement IQ Financial System's software.

Doi was considered a kind and understanding manager, and journalist Scott Pelley said she was remembered as charismatic and attractive.

Doi's passions included dancing, music and painting.

A close friend described her as "incredibly physical at just about everything that she did".

At college, she had ambitions to become a professional ballerina, 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 would sometimes skate more than 10 miles from her apartment to her office at the World Trade Center.

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 the Bronx, they had lived together in a heavily Puerto Rican neighborhood in East Harlem.

Doi was unmarried, and had no children at the time of her death.

Later that year, she enrolled at 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.

On September 11, 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 call was also featured in the 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty.