SNOQUALMIE – It was Tuesday morning. Cathy and Richard Reed and their daughter and son-in-law, Jennifer Runkle Stolle and Jim Stolle, had just turned on the television to see what the weather would be like for their planned excursion into Washington, D.C.

Instead of the weather, they saw images of fire and dust and chaos in New York. Then they witnessed the second airplane slam into the side of one of the two 100-story-high World Trade Center towers.

That’s when the phone rang. Even before it was answered, everyone knew it was for Jennifer, a 27-year-old second-class petty officer with the U.S. Coast Guard stationed in Norfolk, Va.

“At that moment, we said she’s probably going to have to go,” Cathy said.

Less than an hour later, a third plane crashed into the Pentagon, just across the Potomac River from the District of Columbia. At the Norfolk shipyard, Jennifer and the other 10 crew members of the Albacore, an 87-foot Coast Guard cutter, were busy preparing their boat to depart. Jim, a first-class petty officer and Coast Guard instructor, even pitched in to help them mount a .50-caliber gun on the bow of the vessel.

“Norfolk was peeling everybody out as quickly as they could because they didn’t want another Pearl Harbor,” Cathy said.

The Albacore crew, trained to perform search-and-rescue operations and intercept drug runners off American shores, was quickly assigned a new task: patrol the Potomac and protect the nation’s capital.

The Reeds’ vacation was put on hold. The Snoqualmie couple had arrived Sept. 10 and had dinner with their daughter and son-in-law that night. The following morning, they’d planned to visit the Smithsonian Institution.

“We were going to park in the Pentagon parking lot and take the shuttle,” said Cathy, a Snoqualmie City Council member. They decided instead to stay home.

“We ended up spending some time cleaning her carpets and washing her windows because I wanted to make up for her not having a vacation,” Cathy said. The Stolles had recently moved into their house, which lies close to a river that empties into the Chesapeake Bay. The couple had first met while serving together in Seattle. From there, they were stationed in Charleston, S.C., before moving to Norfolk.

As the week progressed, Jennifer, a five-year veteran of the Coast Guard and former Mount Si High School student, called occasionally to let her husband and the Reeds know what was happening. On Sunday, Sept. 16, things had quieted down enough for them to go into Washington, D.C., and visit her where the cutter was anchored near the Pentagon.

“Washington was a ghost town,” Cathy said. Freeway exits to the Pentagon were closed, and fighter jets were constantly flying overhead.

The damage to the Pentagon, she added, was “appalling,” saying, “The hole was as big as downtown Snoqualmie.”

That’s when she realized the significance of Jennifer and her crewmates’ job of protecting Washington, D.C.

“If we don’t have a government, we don’t have a country,” she said. “That’s why I think what she’s doing is so important.”

As of this week, Jennifer and the crew of the Albacore are back in Norfolk, patrolling its Navy base. But it will likely be a while before Cathy sees her daughter again.

“She’s probably not going to get any leave for eight or nine months,” Cathy said.

Six days after they’d originally planned it, the Reeds visited the Smithsonian and its National Museum of American History. Inside, they walked into a special room that the museum is using to restore the Star-Spangled Banner – the flag that inspired the national anthem.

Cathy said seeing that icon of American history in the wake of the terrorists attacks moved her deeply.

“There was just something about that that got to me – that our flag would always be there,” she said.

You can reach Barry Rochford at (425) 888-2311, or e-mail him at barry.rochford@valleyrecord.com.