More Photos Coming soon. Please scroll down and to the right for all the pictures. I apologize if the site looks disorganized, I am still learning how to make the page.

June 17 2002

Today we had the great pleasure of visiting Radio Pinoy (An International Philippine Radio Station). The announcer, Placido, was very accomodating and spent more than an hour with us on air. It was very important for us to address the Filipino community about our message and CD because they lost many of their people in the 9-11 attacks. The sweetest part was when we recieved calls from the listeners. It was a good day.

June 18 2002

Today we had the opportunity to visit the United Nations, courtesy of Ms. Emma Nepomuceno. I loved seeing all the different cultures in one building. It was interesting to learn that the area was completely international property. The place was beautiful. My only sadness is that we were not able to see Angelina Jolie, who was in a meeting (she's a UN ambassadress).

June 19 2002

Today we fulfilled our mission and distributed our CDs to the victims' families and firefighters. It's been a long road, but we finally did it. It was the best experience that I will cherish with me always.

4:00am (1:00am at home) - Woke up early to go to Good Morning America Studio. It was pretty cold but I was too excited with our banner that the children made. We were afraid the fire marshals wouldn't be able to attend, but they pulled through and even got special treatment. :)

7:00am - They finally let us into the studio. We got front row and chatted with the crew for a while. The guest was Ellen Degeneres. The crew and the anchors all received our CD and particularly enjoyed our masks of Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson. Tony Perkins asked us about where Battle Ground, WA was, so we gave him information about our town. They interviewed me three times off the air about "All I Need", but they said that there still were some issues about the 9-11 tragedy so they just thanked us for everything we did with our fundraising project. They however, gave us many close-ups. It was nice to see everyone and Ellen stole my mask for a while and even ran off with it, so we had to chase her. :) There was a very nice cameraman that I gave one of our CDs to and he said he wanted to make a video of it. So we'll see what happens. We got all the autographs for the kids so they should be excited! I hope they had a chance to see their banner on national television! They worked so hard for it!

9:00am - The fire marshals Tom Silvestri and Kevin Connane toured us around all the city's sights in their new van donated by North Carolina Firefighters. New York driving is the most entertaining and frightening thing in the world. They were really great guys and quite the characters -- Tom looked like John Travolta and Kevin looked like Kevin James of the CBS Show, "The King of Queens", and together they acted like the Blues Brothers. To top it off, their Italian accent was so fun to listen to. They were so kind to show us around. They escorted us to the city hall, but unfortunately Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wasn't available. But, the Mayor left a personalized autograph picture for us. The two fire marshals brought us to all the restricted sites because of their special privileges as fire marshals, and then they brought us to the Ground Zero site. It was unbelievable. I could barely breathe looking down and seeing the destruction. It was mind-boggling to picture how a few extremely large buildings once populated the cleared area. How many people lost their lives was made clear when I learned that the huge buildings surrounding us were less then half the height AND width of the World Trade Center towers. It was all put into a different perspective. The area was being cleaned out though, as many men doing construction were working there. There were still abandoned buildings surrounding the site that were still being checked for bodies. I couldn't believe when they told us that just last week they had found another body on the top of a nearby building. We saw all the photos and it's almost too much to put a face to the numbers. While we were at the site we had the opportunity to meet the Firefighters visiting from Paris, France and the NYFD Battalion Chief, Dennis Collopy who is in charge of the Rescue Team. When we left there, we visited all the fire stations and handed out our CDs. I was surprised that they immediately began to sing along -- I guess they heard it already! The employees at the fire station were very touched by our presence, we came all the way from Battle Ground, WA. We were overwhelmed with their good comments about our song, including that it was not commercial like others they received, that it was homegrown, and most importantly for its message. All the people who worked at Tom's and Kevin's fire station were so kind and charismatic, especially Louise Mucciola (the only woman in the station). Then we gave our check to Ann Weiner of the Uniformed Firefighters Scholarship Association and also left the banner in the hands of that fire station. The fire stations will take turns displaying the banner. We spent practically the whole day with Tom and Kevin, and it amazed me just how wonderful they were. When we finished, they brought us back to our relative's van, and we just hugged them both for the longest time. As we were driving away they gave us a salute and I just began to cry. I cried the whole way back because it just hit me that it could have been them that was killed. I could only imagine that there were many amazing people that I did not have the honor of ever meeting because of the attacks. Last but not least, we were able to leave CDs at the office of Cantor Fitzgerald, who lost 800 employees, including customers, who were in the World Trade Center building during the time of the attack. I hope that our efforts has brought, if even only a little, comfort and peace to them.

With Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer of Good Morning America
With Robin Roberts of GMA
With Ann Weiner of Uniformed Firefighters Scholarship Association
With Fire Marshals Kevin Cunnane and Tom Silvestri and Fire Department
World Trade Center Site
Battalion Chief Dennis Collopy and visiting firefighters from Paris, France	Memorial for 23rd and 37th District
Our Transportation!
With Placido of Radio Pinoy
Thank you to our family, relatives, and friends for making this trip and our mission possible.
Battle Ground Rose Float