As with many other mornings I woke to my typical routine. Got things ready for work and I was out the door. Stepping out of the elevator door into the underground garage of my loft building I was thinking about all the things that needed to get done that day. I walked over to my car – then stopped.

Someone had stolen my license plate. I stared at the car for a while because without plates in their normal place it didn’t seem like it was my car. After I shook my head a bit, I got in the car and got out my cell phone to call it in.

When I placed that call, the morning took a drastic change.

I called the local police office to report my license plate stolen off of my vehicle. Well… I don’t watch the news in the morning and I didn’t know what had just happened. The lady on the other end of the phone was a bit frantic and she was asking, “Where are you exactly.” I had told her that I was in the basement garage of my building in downtown Atlanta. She proceeded to tell me about the World Trade Center and that the buildings had fully collapsed. She warned me to get out of my building as they were not sure if other attacks were in the process. Then other questions came over the line about my car, when, where, does the vehicle look like it’s been moved, etc. They were probing in a way that was much more serious than it seemed it should be. I later put it together. They were worried that maybe this vehicle being reported on the morning of 9.11 was used as transportation in some form by those behind the attacks. Sounds crazy, but people were being very careful to check every lead and question everything.

The garage I was sitting in felt like a cavern. It was dim and empty and alone. The world changed at that day. Much of our innocence was torn away and replaced with an un-easy feeling that trouble would always be just around the corner.