Triumph over tragedy
Peters Township native reflects on life-altering events of 9/11
Although he now lives in San Diego, Kevin Shaeffer is a proud member of Steelers Nation. He and his wife, Blanca, will be in attendance when Pittsburgh kicks off the 2026 NFL season against the Atlanta Falcons on Sept. 13 at Acrisure Stadium.
“We bleed black and gold,” Shaeffer said.
Shaeffer added that he’s excited about Eli Heidenreich’s debut. The Mt. Lebanon High School product is a fellow Navy graduate.
“For him to make the 53-man roster is an accomplishment. A point of pride for the entire Navy and the Naval Academy,” Shaeffer added. “It’s an honor, and I hope we put him to work.”
For Shaeffer, he will have the day off after a busy week of travel from the West Coast. In fact, two days before the Steelers game, Shaeffer took part in somber Sept. 11 ceremonies in remembrance of the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that nearly claimed his life.
Shaeffer, 54, was working in the Pentagon watching the events in New York City unfold on television sets from the Navy Command Center.
“I knew right away our country was under attack,” he said at the time when the first airliner struck the World Trade Center, “but I was in the safest place on earth.”
So he thought.
At 9:37 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the west side of the Pentagon, and Shaeffer’s life changed forever. Instantly, 125 of his friends lost their lives, but, although he was on fire, the Peters Township native survived.
“I was 29 at the time,” Shaeffer recalled. “I felt invincible. As a young naval officer, Navy lieutenant,” he said, “I had the world by the tail. The brutal awakening of what happened on the morning of 9/11 was a heavy dose of reality.”
He was “forced” to focus inward and fight for survival. After clawing his way through a booby-trapped maze of tangled electrical wires and broken water pipes, he saw a glimpse of daylight. Once he crawled through the opening, Army Sgt. 1st Class Steve Workman rescued him, placed him on a cart and commandeered the first ambulance that rushed him to Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Shaeffer was burned over 47% of his body. He suffered severe internal injuries, particularly to his lungs after inhaling jet fuel fumes, and gall bladder, which was removed. He suffered two cardiac arrests.
“It was a defining moment in the chapters of my life,” Shaeffer said. “I’ve embraced it and endured it and overcome aspects of it to get to the other side. When something that traumatic happens where you really are hitting rock bottom, that forces one to focus on what’s vital in life.
“That was my health, the loved ones around me, my wife, my family. I’ve always sought to be an optimist and see the good and make good out of the most difficult situations and experiences. So I’ve carried that spirit forward and focused on key priorities and learned lessons that oftentimes only are learned through many decades of life’s experiences. I was able to take on board something positive in the midst of a lot of tragedy.”
After his second cardiac arrest, Shaeffer was medically retired from the Navy on Oct. 5, 2001. However, his recovery continued with two more months in the hospital undergoing strenuous physical and occupational therapy. While he continued to recover, Shaeffer managed to attend a ceremony in the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes. On his 30th birthday, April 26, he received the Purple Heart. In May, he returned to his hometown and visited his alma mater, Peters Township High School. He addressed students and athletes during assemblies and at banquets, including The Almanac Sports Banquet, where a scholarship was established in his name and another local victim, Ken Waldie, a Bethel Park native.
“After some months of fighting for my life, literally every day with every breath and every hour of every day, I realized I could get back in the arena and back into service,” Shaeffer said.
Shaeffer leaped at the chance to serve on the 9/11 Commission when it was created on Nov. 27, 2002. The final report was released on July 22, 2004.
As a staff investigator, he was the only 9/11 survivor on the committee. He essentially focused on what became Chapter One of the report. Shaeffer’s team looked at the federal, state, and local awareness as well as reconstructed down to the minute what was happening as the attacks unfolded. Everything that happened with regard to the hijackings and the attacks, and then every response action to what happened was analyzed.
“Our team focused on learning the lessons of emergency preparedness and response actions to the attacks,” Shaeffer explained. “In a real way, it was a very deep investigation to uncover the ground truth of what happened that day and then learn lessons from that.”
After his work with the 9/11 Commission and because Shaeffer had been medically retired from the Navy, he transitioned to the CIA. Shaeffer noted that he was not an intelligence officer in the Navy, rather he was a surface warfare officer.
“Which meant I served on surface vessels,” he said. “I was on a cruiser and destroyer during my time in active duty in the Navy.
“It was another chapter of my life,” he added. “My motivation was to lend my talents to national security. It was that deep drive to make a difference.”
Shaeffer worked on counterproliferation, and counterterrorism. Counterproliferation is working against and tackling threats of weapons of mass destruction. Shaeffer’s focus was on nuclear weapons proliferation.
Ultimately, Shaeffer was asked to join the HVT 1 team, which had the lead and was dedicated to finding Osama bin Laden.
While he said that he didn’t wear it on his sleeve, nor to speak of it, 9/11 was the impetus that motivated Shaeffer to find the mastermind behind the attacks. “It was a burning motivation, a burning desire to contribute to that team effort,” he said.
“The hunt for bin Laden went on for years. It was like a marathon, and there were many runners on the team and different mile markers of the race,” Shaeffer continued. “Based on what I had endured and overcome, I think it was meaningful that I was a runner in the final miles.”
On May 2, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALS raided a compound in Pakistan and killed bin Laden. During the operation, Shaeffer was in a position to observe the mission and communicate aspects of the detail.
“It was surreal,” he said. “In the moment, there was a tremendous sense of personal closure. In response to hearing the call out that indeed bin Laden was on target and that they had gotten him, I wrote ‘justice, delayed but not denied.’ That’s what I captured in that moment, a moment for which I had waited so long.”
In a few seconds the marking of that instance and what it meant evaporated because the HVT-1 team had to make sure the SEAL team returned home safely. “It was time to get back to work and there still was a lot of work to do,” Shaeffer said.
Information regarding the raid and killing of bin Laden was declassified and released in multiple tranches beginning in May 2015. Netflix also produced a series on the operation. However, Shaeffer only spoke of his involvement in the mission when interviewed for a CBS special report on the anniversary of Sept. 11 in 2024. A three-part podcast titled “From The Langley Files” details his role and can be heard at www.shaefferspeaks.com.
Shaeffer acknowledges that time passes and while an entire generation has no first-hand recollection of 911, he stressed that we, as a nation, have an obligation to never forget and we have an obligation to represent. Shaeffer does his personal part by sharing his experiences through speaking engagements. His website www.shaefferspeaks.com offers details and testimonials.
“You make the most impact on the ground locally, and you make the most impact personally, and that’s all you can do. And so, in my life, I spend a lot of my time these days to speaking and serving as a living history to the attacks and the living history to our nation.”
Shaeffer hopes that the 25th anniversary of 9/11 can resurrect the feelings of unity among the citizens in this country.
“In these times that are so divisive, where it’s hard to agree on anything, it seems that we should take time to reflect and pause and think about those times when we were all together and unified and let that memory move us forward in how we act and treat one another.
“There was this sense that all of us, who witnessed the attacks and lived through the aftermath, remember what it was like to come together as a nation, as communities, as families and help each other get through.”
Now 25 years later, Shaeffer still feels that compassion and empathy.
“I’m reflecting upon that time when I was healing from my grave wounds and I felt that support. I felt that love and that unity. That made all the difference to me because I felt it. I needed it. And that helped me get through,” he said.