9/11 20 Years Later: Coachella Valley Remembers

KESQ News Channel 3 is sharing in-depth coverage of the 9/11 anniversary and stories of people who have experienced life in America since 9/11 in vastly different ways.

On Wednesday, reporter Jeff Stahl talks with Mary Arthen who knew a Palm Springs resident Barbara Keating, one of the 2,977 people who died on September 11, 2001.

“Even though it’s been 20 years whenever I watch it, it feels like it just happened,” Arthen said.

“And I still feel that same gloomy thinking about her and everybody else that was involved. But it was harder because we knew her personally,” Arthen added.

Hear how her church continues to pay tribute to Keating’s life, and the lingering effects the attack has had on the community.

There were lessons learned in the 9/11 attacks local emergency planners have since addressed.

“I turn on the news and the first plane had hit and it looked like an unbelievable accident,” said Shane Reichardt with the Riverside County Emergency Management Department. “Then you saw the second plane hit and started hearing things, you realized there’s a lot going on here,” Reichardt added.

Hear what local emergency planners are doing now to better protect the Coachella Valley during man-made or natural disasters.

Perhaps nobody was impacted more by the 9/11 attacks than America’s military veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 20 years.

Robi Yucas had just graduated from US Army Officer’s school a month prior to the 9/11 attack. His first thought when seeing the devastating images from New York was to get ready for a call to action. 

"Me and my class of newly minted 2nd Lieutenants were all sitting there watching and waiting,” Yucas said.

Jeff Stahl spoke with Yucas and several other Coachella Valley veterans who are still struggling with the war’s official end and what this means to the people they spent years trying to help.

“I don’t want my soldiers to ever think they wasted their time,” said a local educator and now retired Army officer Michelle Cherland, “Because they were really good soldiers, and they helped out so much at a time when these people needed it,” Cherland added.

She served in both Iraq and Afghanistan where she was awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Cherland says she knows many other veterans who wish they could do more to help the people of Afghanistan who suffer under the brutal rule of the Taliban.

Hear these stories beginning Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at 6:00 p.m. on KESQ News Channel 3.