9/11, 25 years later: How Thea Trinidad keeps her father's memory alive through professional wrestling

On September 13, 2001, Lillian Garcia stood in the center of a WWE ring — alone — with tens of thousands of eyeballs on her at the Compaq Center in Houston, Texas. Normally the WWE's ring announcer, Garcia had been tasked with a nominal-turned-monumental duty — singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" — two days after the most significant terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

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More than 1,600 miles away, in the shadows of the ever-altered New York City skyline, 10-year-old Thea Trinidad watched — as she always did — after experiencing an upheaval most do at some point in their life, but few as suddenly as her.

"That one's specifically always stuck out to me," Trinidad, a former WWE champion who performed under the alias Zelina Vega, tells Uncrowned. "I remember that one specifically, I saw all of the wrestlers get really emotional and seeing Lillian, still I always tell her: 'Yours is still my favorite to hear.'

“It just felt like, in that moment, the thing that I loved most was kind of shining a light on my dad. In a way, it kind of felt like it was just for 9/11, and it felt like it was just for those people. And I think in a weird way, it was important for us to feel that, because everyone else just felt like you were a thing, like a spectacle. You were someone to look at. You almost felt like you were the circus animal, and you were like, 'Oh, look, they dealt with that,' or, 'Oh, look, her dad died.' It just felt like wrestling was the thing that I've always felt seen in."

Thea and her brother Timothy are seen in a photo with their father, Michael. (Photos courtesy of Thea Trinidad)Thea Trinidad

Trinidad's father, Michael Angel Trinidad, was a telecommunications analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, working on the 103rd floor in the North Tower at the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. Home from school awaiting a doctor's appointment, Trinidad was present when her father made one of hundreds, maybe thousands of gut-wrenching phone calls that morning.

"Because they were divorced at the time, my mom didn't even know that he worked at the World Trade Center," Trinidad recalls. "My brother and I knew because he would take us there all the time. And I remember because we would think, like, ‘Oh my God, this is such a weird feeling,’ because you’d feel the building sway. As you were standing there, you felt it kind of swaying. So us as kids, we would think, 'Wow, this is so cool.'

"At first when we saw it, I thought it was like some horror movie or something, you know?Or some action movie, or something that was happening that couldn't be real. He had called and just told her, 'I'm calling to say goodbye because I don't think I'm going to make it out.' She was so taken aback by that. I think at that point, once I understood that it was my dad that was actually in the buildings, I felt like it was like a weird out of body experience, where I saw everything, and I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. Everything in my body just felt frozen."

The phone call, which Trindad remembers lasting from 9:04 to 9:14 a.m., came 18 minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building, notably below Cantor Fitzgerald's offices. The fire and wreckage below, combined with the rising smoke, made escape near-impossible. There was a confession of profound love from Michael Trinidad to his family — and instructions to Thea's stepfather: "Please be a father to my kids. I know they love you, so please be there for them like I would."

At 10:28 a.m. ET, the North Tower collapsed. Michael Trinidad was dead at the age of 33.

"From then there were a lot of things going on at once, that I just feel like, as a 10-year-old, I couldn't really process that well,” she says. “Because even after we kind of figured that he obviously didn't make it, I would still — because I would go with him every weekend — I still packed my bags thinking that he was going to come. So I think, even psychologically, it took some time before I understood what was going on." 

In the days, weeks and months after 9/11, families desperately clung to hope of seeing their loved ones again. (Photos courtesy of Thea Trinidad)Thea Trinidad

In the aftermath of an unthinkable loss, Trinidad managed to pull purpose out of the wreckage and refused to let tragedy define the trajectory of her life. First, she found Camp Haze, a summer camp founded in 2002 for children who lost a family member in the attacks, named for Scott Hazelcorn, a 29-year-old broker for Cantor Fitzgerald who died in the World Trade Center. 

"I think I'm very good at putting a mask on and pretending like everything is okay and everything's totally fine, you know?" Trinidad says. "You need to have an outlet that, when it either does explode, or hopefully before it even gets to that point, you have an outlet, a safe place to actually feel like you are heard, accepted, and understood, because I think that's all anybody really wants is someone who understands them. 

"For the longest time, I was the 9/11 kid. People would act so weird around me in school, especially when it came to that time. They'd be like, ‘Oh, we just saw her reading names on the news,’ like during the 9/11 thing. My own friends didn't even know how to talk to me. So, I think I just needed people who also just understood me."

After Camp Haze — where Trinidad eventually became a counselor — the Queens native homed in on the place where she always felt seen: her memories at Madison Square Garden with her father and brother. 

She turned to professional wrestling.

Michael Trinidad was an amateur wrestler and avid fan of professional wrestling, a quality he instilled in his daughter, Thea. (Photos courtesy of Thea Trinidad)Thea Trinidad

"I remember around 15 years old is probably when it really hit me," Trinidad says. "[My dad] showed me a match between Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero back in, like, 1997. It was Halloween Havoc, and I never forgot it. I remember seeing that thinking, ‘I want to do that.’ He was really the only one at that time that was super supportive of it. I knew that it was his dream, too, because he was an amateur wrestler in high school — I still have his wrestling trophies — he wanted to do it professionally, but with three jobs and a wife and kids, that just wasn't going to happen.

“So after everything, I said I'm going to do this for him, but I'm going to do this for me too, and live our dreams together."

By 2011, Trinidad was wrestling for TNA and spent the better part of the next decade wrestling on the independent circuit, using the name Rosita. In 2017, Trinidad made her way to WWE as Zelina Vega. During Trinidad's time with WWE she rose from primarily managing Andrade to winning the inaugural Queen of the Ring tournament, becoming a Women's Tag Team Champion and Women's United States Champion.

Most importantly, Trinidad was able to create relationships that helped foster her late father's dream, even beyond the ring. Trinidad was cast to play AJ Lee in 2019's "Fighting With My Family," a biopic of WWE star Paige that was produced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Seven Bucks Productions.

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and his daughter Simone paid their respects to Michael Trinidad at the 9/11 Memorial. (Photos courtesy of Thea Trinidad)Thea Trinidad

"It's just crazy sometimes, even when I look back, The Rock was his favorite wrestler, and the fact that I ended up meeting him and working with him and becoming very close to him, to the point where Dwayne and his daughter got to go and visit my dad's name, at the 9/11 Memorial, is still mind-blowing to me," Trinidad said. "I'm like, that's so crazy. The Rock knows your name. That's still wild."

Trinidad, along with her husband Tom Budgen — aka pro-wrestler Malakai Black — were released from WWE earlier this year. It was a significant blow that put Trinidad in a position she had been in before, most notably after her father's passing, 25 years ago. With her mother and brother struggling, Trinidad put off her own reconciliation with the tragedy to become the rock for those closest to her. 

Then — and now — "survival mode" kicked in.

"A lot of things just kind of plummeted this year for me, and I think that's where it goes into survival mode, and it starts to kick in, and I'm like, 'OK, where do we go next?’” she says. “‘OK, we're going to pick back up streaming. OK, we're going to explore these other opportunities that you've never been able to.' Korea, I've never been there. Japan, I haven't been there in a while. It allows me to not feel like there's nowhere else to go.

“Whenever I'm at a really, really low point, I'm the person that takes care of my family. They depend on me. So I have to be that strong anchor for them too, because [if] something happens to me, that means something happens to them, and I can't allow that. So that's where I guess the protective side comes in."

Trinidad, now using the ring-name Xelina, made her official wrestling return at House of Glory earlier this month as well as appearing at PROGRESS wrestling in the UK. Trinidad also rattled off TNA, AEW and Stardom as other potential opportunities in this new chapter of her career.

"It almost feels like a second chance to explore that other side of what my character could be and what I can be as a professional wrestler," Trinidad says. "Especially working with different people, but also giving me a second chance to live that dream for my dad and making sure that dream doesn't die." 

As with most things in life, the more time that passes the less impactful moments — even those as reality-breaking as the 9/11 attacks — feel, especially from those who aren't as close to it as Trinidad. Anniversaries eventually turn into afterthoughts, moments bound for history books and entering the national discourse on nice, round numbers.

"Although some people may not feel like it's directly affecting their family or themselves, it's something that we as a country went through together, no matter what," Trinidad says. "You can't really let something like that go. They always say, ‘9/11, never forget,’ and it's because I think the biggest thing for me that came out of that was how much we all came together. No matter what the differences were, all of us came together at once to be there for each other as a country. I remember how that felt, and I don't think I've ever felt that really since."

Thea Trinidad recalled a sign a fan brought to a show, declaring "Michael Trinidad has the best seat in the house. 9/11 never forget." (Photos courtesy of Thea Trinidad)Thea Trinidad

As Trinidad continues to keep her father's memory alive through professional wrestling, she has some help, too. Trinidad's fans still visit the 9/11 Memorial and take pictures next to Michael's name, and Trinidad herself will occasionally draw the old New York City skyline on her wrestling sneakers. Trinidad even recalled a fan's sign at a show that proclaimed: "Michael Trinidad will always have the best seat in the house."

"I still feel like I have a world title that I want to bring him," Trinidad says. "I still feel like there's just so much more of me to give. I will do this until my bones break and make sure that I can't do it anymore."

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