When Katie Pereira was 7 years old, some of her happiest memories involved a place that would later become inseparable from the worst day of her life.

Her father, Franco Lalama, worked inside the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Katie loved going to work with him, spending time in his office on the 64th floor and exploring the stores beneath the complex afterward.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001.

Lalama went to work that morning and never returned.

Katie lost her father in the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. She was suddenly a grieving child trying to understand something that adults across the country could barely comprehend themselves.

Just two months later, however, her mother made a decision that would eventually shape Katie’s entire life.

She sent her to a camp for grieving children.

Twenty-five years later, Katie still hasn’t really left.

Today, at 32, she is a mother herself and serves as a regional camp director for Comfort Zone Camp — the same nonprofit organization that helped her begin processing her father’s death as a child.

Her Favorite Memories Were at the World Trade Center

Before Sept. 11 became a date Katie associated with unimaginable loss, the World Trade Center was connected to ordinary childhood happiness.

Lalama was a civil engineer for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. His office was located on the 64th floor of the North Tower. Katie has recalled loving the days when she could accompany him to work because it gave the self-described “daddy’s girl” time alone with her father.

She remembers resting beneath his desk while he worked and visiting shops with him afterward.

Those seemingly small moments became enormously valuable after Sept. 11.

According to accounts Katie has received about her father’s final hours, Lalama was trying to make sure colleagues evacuated safely as the emergency unfolded.

A coworker later remembered him staying behind while encouraging others to go ahead.

Katie has said she cannot know precisely what happened to her father in his final moments, but she takes comfort in believing he was helping other people — behavior she says fit the person she knew him to be.

Grieving Was Different When Everyone Knew Her Story

For Katie, losing her father was intensely personal.

But the way he died was public.

She grew up in Nutley, New Jersey, a small community outside New York City where people at her Catholic school knew her family. After the attacks, she felt as though people were constantly observing her reactions.

Would she cry?

Would she appear happy?

How was the little girl whose father died on 9/11 supposed to behave?

Katie later described feeling isolated while trying to handle emotions that were far bigger than her age.

Comfort Zone Camp offered something different.

The nonprofit, founded in 1998, mobilized after the attacks and brought a special program to children affected by 9/11 in November 2001.

Katie was among those young campers.

There, the thing that made her different everywhere else suddenly made her ordinary.

Other children understood what it meant to lose someone.

She did not have to explain why she might be angry one moment and happy the next. She could speak about her father without worrying about how someone else expected her to grieve.

For the first time after the tragedy, she began to understand that she wasn’t facing it by herself.

She Kept Coming Back

That first camp weekend did not magically erase Katie’s grief.

It did something more lasting: it gave her a place to return to while she grew through it.

Comfort Zone says Katie continued attending camps for years. When she became older, she transitioned from camper to volunteer, becoming what the organization calls a “Big Buddy” — an adult paired with a grieving child to provide one-on-one support during camp.

Eventually, it became more than volunteering.

Katie joined the organization’s staff and today is listed as a Regional Camp Director.

The girl who once arrived needing someone to reassure her that she could survive life without her father now helps create that same experience for other children.

Comfort Zone has grown substantially since Katie first attended.

The nonprofit says it has helped more than 27,000 grieving children since 1998, providing its programs at no cost to families. It also works with thousands of volunteers and offers camps and other support programs for children who have lost parents, siblings, guardians or other important people in their lives.

Katie’s involvement now includes organizing programs for young people experiencing precisely the kind of grief she once carried into camp herself.

Becoming a Mother Changed How She Saw Her 7-Year-Old Self

One of the most emotional parts of Katie’s life now comes from watching her own children grow.

She is a mother of two, and her daughter has reached the same age Katie was when her father died.

Seeing a 7-year-old from the perspective of a parent has changed the way Katie thinks about her own childhood.

Adults sometimes assume young children cannot fully understand death or the events unfolding around them.

Katie sees it differently.

Watching her daughter process the world has reinforced her belief that children can understand much more than adults sometimes give them credit for.

For Katie, that realization has also been healing.

It validates the frightened, grieving child she remembers being after Sept. 11 — a child who understood enough to know that her father was gone and that life had permanently changed.

There Is Another Kind of Loss 25 Years Later

Time has brought Katie another difficult challenge.

Some memories of her father are beginning to feel less certain.

She has said she sometimes asks her mother whether particular childhood memories really happened because they can now feel almost unreal.

That may be one of the quieter cruelties of losing a parent so young.

A child doesn’t only lose the person.

As decades pass, she can also worry about losing details — a voice, a conversation, an ordinary afternoon together.

Yet Katie has found another way to preserve her connection to Lalama.

She tries to live according to the qualities she remembers in him.

Her father was someone she describes as caring, responsible and willing to help others. By spending her life helping grieving children, Katie sees her work as an extension of those same values.

From “The 9/11 Kid” to Someone Helping Other Kids

For years, Katie risked being defined by one sentence:

She was the little girl whose dad died on 9/11.

Comfort Zone helped her gradually build an identity larger than that tragedy.

The loss never disappeared. Neither did her father.

But grief stopped being the only thing determining what came next.

Twenty-five years after Lalama entered the North Tower for the last time, his daughter is still connected to the camp she first entered as a grieving child.

Only now, she is standing on the other side.

Every time another frightened child arrives wondering whether anyone understands what they are experiencing, Katie can offer something especially powerful.

She does understand.

She has lived it.

And instead of allowing the worst day of her childhood to become the end of her story, she built a life around helping other children discover that their own stories can continue too.