Thursday, October 1, 2026
Former Long Beach resident Noreen Costello heard the news at around 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, about an hour before President Obama told the world that Osama bin Laden — the man behind the most devastating terrorist attacks in American history — was dead.
“My daughter heard about it on YouTube,” said Costello, whose brother, 44-year-old former Long Beach resident Patrick O’Keefe, a firefighter with the New York City Fire Department’s Rescue Company One and the father of two, died in the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
“The initial reaction was, thank God,” Costello said. “My nephew, who is now 20, was ecstatic over the news. I was glad that this is some sort of closure, but when I called my sister-in-law, we just cried.”
O’Keefe’s unit, part of an elite rescue unit, was one of the first to arrive at the World Trade Center that morning. O’Keefe was a scuba diver and trained firefighters for underwater rescue operations, said Costello, who works for the City of Long Beach. “He was a very gregarious guy,” she said. “He was always smiling.”
O’Keefe was known among his fellow firefighter for high-profile rescues. He is known for his work battling a major fire at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan and for helping to bring a panicked civilian, who was about to jump from the 12th floor of a building in Times Square, to safety.
In an incident in 1997, when two young girls were trapped on the 28th floor of a building adjacent to a burning apartment, O’Keefe acted as a human pulley, bracing himself against a wall and lowering his fellow rescuers from the roof to save the lives of the two young women.
“On 9/11, Patrick was going off tour,” Costello said, “and he called his wife and said he going to stay.”
Costello launched a nonprofit organization in her brother’s memory after his death, the O’Keefe Foundation Inc., which grants scholarships to high school students who have lost a parent to a tragedy or to immigrant students starting over in the U.S.
And though bin Laden’s death was welcome news, Costello said that she could not get caught up in the celebratory mood. Many of those who lost loved ones in the attacks have said that the news also brought back memories of the tragedy.
