When the call came in 24 years ago that the World Trade Center was under attack, New York Police Department Detective Joseph V. Vigiano was one of the first to rush into the Twin Towers to try to get victims out, his son, NYPD Detective Joseph J. Vigiano, told Newsmax Thursday.
On the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, the younger Vigiano told “The Record With Greta Van Susteren” that he shares more with his late father than just his name. He also shares his late father’s shield number.
“It’s incredibly humbling,” he said. “I mean, to be able to put on the same shield number as my father — 4511 — and work the same job that he worked and find that I love it just as much as he loved it, it’s a surreal experience.”
Only 8 years old at the time of his father’s death, Vigiano said he decided to join the NYPD because its officers stood in for his father as he finished growing up.
“After the loss of my father, the NYPD was a second family to me. They filled that void for holidays, picnics, birthday parties. And they were there for me when my father wasn’t,” he said.
“And I wanted to be part of that camaraderie. That is why I joined the NYPD after college and the Marine Corps and ended up working in the same precinct my father started in — the 75th precinct.”
Vigiano said he would eventually go on to become a member of the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit, Squad 7, where his father had started his career.
“The Emergency Service Unit, or ESU, is the NYPD’s tactical team and tactical rescue team. So we handle everything from high-risk search warrants, barricade perpetrators, barricaded emotionally disturbed persons to people in need of help, building collapses, people that may want to hurt themselves or jump off bridges or buildings,” he said.
“Men under trains that we may have to rescue, as well as vehicle extrication. We’re all trained EMTs and we’re the jack-of-all-trades of the NYPD.”
Once he was promoted to the rank of detective, he was able to request his father’s shield number, Vigiano said.
Vigiano’s mother, who was also an NYPD officer, is “incredibly proud” of her children’s achievements, he said, but “she definitely worries — not just about me, but all three of her sons, especially the baby, the youngest one, who’s currently serving in the Marine Corps, stationed in Hawaii.”
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