Sara Botkin expected September 11, 2001, to begin with music.

The 24-year-old singer had a temporary job at an insurance brokerage inside the World Trade Center, but before heading upstairs that Tuesday morning, she had something else on her mind: Mariah Carey.

Carey’s Glitter soundtrack was being released that day, and Botkin wanted a copy. She stopped at the Sam Goody store in the shopping complex beneath the Twin Towers, bought the CD and then headed toward the elevators.

That small detour meant she was still on the ground floor when the first plane struck the North Tower.

Botkin never reached her workplace on the 105th floor of the South Tower.

The purchase she had considered nothing more than an ordinary stop on the way to work became the unexpected delay that allowed her to escape before the second plane hit.

A Young Singer Building a Life in New York

Botkin had moved to New York after graduating from the University of Virginia in 1999 with a music degree.

She was pursuing a professional singing career, taking opportunities ranging from performances with the National Chorale at Lincoln Center to seasonal jobs singing holiday music in office buildings. To support herself between performances, she also worked temporary office jobs.

By the summer of 2001, one of those assignments had taken her to Aon Corporation at the World Trade Center. She was filling in for an employee who was away on maternity leave.

Outside work, Botkin was building another important part of her life.

She lived in Astoria, Queens, while her boyfriend, Ovi, worked as a waiter aboard a cruise ship. Each Saturday, when the ship came into port, the couple would spend the limited time they had together.

Then came the morning that changed everything.

She Was Holding the CD When the First Plane Hit

Botkin remembered the sky being strikingly clear when she left home.

After purchasing the Glitter soundtrack, she joined the line for the elevators that would take her high into the South Tower.

Then she heard a tremendous impact.

At first, the people around her did not fully understand what had happened. Security personnel indicated that the problem involved the other tower and that the building they were in was secure.

But Botkin noticed others choosing to leave.

Two young businessmen pushed their way past an older security guard rather than remain inside. Their decision influenced hers.

Botkin went outside.

Looking upward, she could see smoke and a damaged section of the North Tower. From the ground, she still had no way of understanding the scale of what was unfolding. She initially wondered whether some kind of aviation accident had occurred.

Whatever the explanation, she knew she wanted distance from the complex.

She headed for the subway.

Her Family Was Already Fearing the Worst

Communication was difficult as Botkin made her way away from Lower Manhattan. Payphones were crowded, and she eventually traveled as far as Grand Central before finding an available phone booth.

She called her father’s office in Pittsburgh.

The reaction on the other end immediately told her that the situation was much larger than she realized. The receptionist excitedly announced that Sara was on the phone because her family had been desperately waiting for confirmation that she was alive.

Her father instructed her to return to Queens and call again once she arrived.

On the above-ground portion of the subway trip, Botkin finally saw the horrifying scale of the disaster.

Both towers were burning.

At her apartment, another emotional shock awaited her. Her answering machine contained repeated messages from her mother, crying and pleading for Sara to make contact.

Botkin initially thought she might simply stay home from work the following day.

Then her mother told her the South Tower — the building where Botkin had been expected to spend her morning — had collapsed.

She turned on the television and began comprehending what she had escaped.

The attacks ultimately killed nearly 3,000 people. Aon Corporation lost 176 employees.

A Boyfriend Who Thought She Was Gone

Botkin’s family was not alone in fearing she had been killed.

Ovi initially believed his girlfriend had died at the World Trade Center. Only after hearing from Botkin’s mother did he learn that she had escaped.

He cried when he discovered she was alive.

Two weekends later, when the couple finally saw one another, Ovi proposed.

The trauma of September 11 had transformed how they viewed time, distance and the future. Botkin later reflected that the attacks accelerated their relationship.

New York also no longer felt like the place where she wanted to remain.

The attacks, followed by anxiety surrounding anthrax letters in the weeks afterward, left Botkin yearning to return to Pittsburgh. Ovi wanted to go with her.

On Dec. 8, 2001, less than three months after 9/11, they married.

Twenty-five years later, they remained together.

A Painful Return to Singing

Music had indirectly helped Botkin escape the towers, but it soon placed her face-to-face with the grief left behind.

On the Sunday after the attacks, she left her apartment for the first time and joined her choir for a performance at The Plaza Hotel.

A communication center had been established there for relatives of missing Cantor Fitzgerald employees. The financial firm, located high in the North Tower, suffered devastating losses, with 658 employees killed.

Botkin and the choir performed for families waiting in anguish.

Rather than offering the comfort she had hoped music might provide, she remembered seeing exhausted women and children crying even harder.

It became one of her most painful memories from that period.

The CD Never Became Just Another Album

Botkin kept the Mariah Carey CD she purchased that morning.

After Carey learned about her survival story, the singer also sent Botkin a signed CD and photograph.

Yet Botkin rarely plays the album that became linked forever to the most consequential morning of her life.

Today, she is the owner and president of Botkin Family Wealth Management and shares three children with Ovi: sons Henry and Alex and daughter Charlotte.

She also continues to sing, including at church and at home with her family.

Every September, however, the memories return.

Botkin has said she allows herself to experience the grief surrounding the anniversary. She watches footage from the attacks and thinks about families whose losses did not end when the day itself was over.

Her own children give the story another dimension.

Had she reached the elevator a little earlier, skipped the music store or simply decided that the new Mariah Carey album could wait until later, the life she eventually built might never have existed.

For Botkin, that realization brings two emotions that have remained inseparable for a quarter-century: profound gratitude for the life she was able to continue, and sorrow for the thousands of others whose families never received the phone call saying their loved one was safe.