Lara Lundstrom Clarke Credits Chance Gwyneth Paltrow Run-In With Saving Her Life On 9/11

A chance encounter with Gwyneth Paltrow may have saved the life of a woman on her way to the World Trade Center on the fateful morning of September 11, 2001.

Lara Lundstrom Clarke, a then-24-year-old account manager at Baseline Financial Services (located on the 77th floor of Tower 2), started her morning like any other workday.

“I started off by rollerblading on the Hudson, got a good workout in, and was running late to work,” Lara told Kit Hoover during an interview on Access Hollywood Live on Friday. “Jaywalking is quite common, so there was an intersection in [the] West Village [and] I needed to get to the 1/9 train quickly. So I jaywalked across 7th Avenue, and the same time I was doing that, a silver Mercedes SUV comes barreling down, or, I should say driving down like she was supposed to – I was the one who was in the wrong there — and almost hit me with her car.

“It was a classic start/stop situation, it happened about three times, and then finally, we both started laughing,” she continued. “I looked over to my left, and there was Gwyneth Paltrow behind the wheel. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and she waved me across. I couldn’t wait to tell my co-workers what I had experienced. “

As Lara made her way to the subway station, she was frustrated to see the doors of the train slam shut as the train disappeared down the track.

“I literally missed my train by seconds,” she said. “It was one of those instances where I was going to be late, [so] at least I had a good story to tell. I was kind of annoyed, because we were under a lot of pressure at work [to be] on time.”

As she exited the subway station, Lara first realized something was dreadfully wrong as a female police officer was yelling at people to move away from the towers.

“I looked over my shoulder and I saw a gaping hole in the World Trade Center. I was just flabbergasted,” she said. “I walked a few more blocks, because I saw things that no one should ever see [and] people’s worst moments of their lives.”

After a quick phone call to her father to let him know she was all right, Lara’s attention turned to her friends and co-workers already at the office.

“I was really worried about my friends at Baseline, but at the time, our tower had not been hit,” she explained. “I called one of my best friends – one who comes to work late — and told him I was coming up to see him, and literally walked two blocks north, and as that happened all cell phones went out.

“As I looked over my shoulder, everyone starts running, so I start running because I figure there’s got to be something else happening and I looked over and that’s when the second plane came into my office,” she continued.

Watching her office explode into flames brought Lara to her knees as she became sick to her stomach, fearing all of her co-workers had died.

In an interview with The Morton Report, Lara revealed she’s been haunted by two recurring dreams since the terrorist attacks – a nightmare in which she dies inside the towers and another in which she thanks the Oscar-winning beauty for possibly saving her life.

“If I had made that train I would have been at my desk on the 77th floor of 2 World Trade center,” she told TMR.

Prompted by friends as the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, Lara wrote a letter to Gwyneth, reminding her of their fateful 7th Avenue encounter.

Stephen Huvane, Gwyneth’s publicist, told TMR that the actress does indeed remember the encounter with Lara, and is “deeply moved” by the story.

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