Six years after her mother’s gut-wrenching death from 9/11-related stomach cancer, Noelle Borders now takes comfort in feeling like she has a guardian angel close by.
The 28-year-old Bayonne, NJ resident is one of four family members of World Trade Center terrorist attack victims who received readings from psychic Theresa Caputo as part of her controversial new special, “Long Island Medium: In Memory of 9/11,” premiering at 10 p.m. Thursday on TLC and Discovery+.
Caputo, 54, told The Post she aims to connect survivors of Sept. 11 victims — including those who lost family in the Pentagon and in the Shanksville, Pa. plane crash — with the spiritual realm to offer messages of healing 20 years after the attacks.
Of course, the popular TV personality with the signature blonde bouffant has faced — and denied — claims that she’s a “fake” for years now, but when news of Caputo’s polarizing new TV venture broke in mid-August, social media watchdogs predicted major backlash. Some critics declared it “utterly shameful,” going so far as to suggest it’s blatant exploitation.
However, Borders — who had never seen a medium — actually contacted the network seeking out a sit-down with Caputo, in hopes of finding some semblance of peace and closure. She told The Post the reading was just what she needed.
“Even as sensitive as this special is, I feel every reading I do is sensitive and special.”
“Long Island Medium” Theresa Caputo, responding to The Post about accusations of exploitation.
“Just knowing that [my mother] never left me, she’s always with me, it just gave me peace,” Borders, who works as an elementary school teacher, said of her takeaway from the experience. “To know that she’s happy and back to her regular self just put me at ease.”
Her mother, the then-28-year-old Bayonne resident Marcy Borders, worked for Bank of America in the North Tower of the World Trade Center — and, on Sept. 11, escaped from the 81st floor with a storm of smoke and dust chasing after her. In addition to her story of survival that day, the elder Borders, who died at age 42 in 2015 from her illness, was seared into the global consciousness via a widely circulated Agence France-Presse image. It shows her completely covered in ash, except for two wiped-away areas around her eyes, which resulted in her enduring “Dust Lady” moniker.
Though she didn’t perish in the attacks, Marcy Borders lived with the trauma for more than a decade — battling depression, as well as drug and alcohol abuse. She later overcame her struggles by entering rehab, finding God and learning of the death of Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.
“The treatment got me sober, but bin Laden being killed was a bonus,” Marcy told The Post in 2011. “I used to lose sleep over him, have bad dreams about bin Laden bombing my house, but now I have peace of mind.”
And, according to her daughter, she still does.
“It felt like closure, just making sure that my loved one was okay,” said Borders of her reading.
Caputo was at home in Hicksville on the day of the terror attacks, and watched the events unfold on television. She told The Post she didn’t lose anyone that day, but the then-34-year-old — who six years earlier had discovered her “gift,” as she calls it — used Sept. 11 as her own turning point: to become a medium.
“People didn’t know what happened to their loved ones — they weren’t able to recover their physical bodies, they wanted to know if they were afraid, if they knew what was happening,” Caputo told The Post. “To be able to give that peace and closure, and knowing that their loved ones’ souls are at peace was just such an honor. And you realize 20 years later, people absolutely still struggle.”
Beyond whatever sense of soulful resolution she can offer, Caputo said witnessing the combined strength of these 9/11 survivors resonated.
“These family members have to relive their loved ones’ passing moment by moment, minute by minute, hour by hour, and it’s almost like, how does someone heal from that?” Caputo added. “Reliving it and going through it step by step — and to see the strength and resilience from the people that I read was just incredible.”
However, not everyone is pleased with Caputo’s approach. After TLC — which approached her to do the special — released a preview in August and posted the clip on on its Instagram feed, certain users slammed the premise.
“Once again exploiting these poor desperate family members lying to them into making them believe she can speak to the dead like COME ON PEOPLE!” commented one seething critic, adding, “omgggg this makes me sick to my stomach.”
Asked to comment on critics who question her motives, Caputo told The Post she makes each spirit validate their identity by sharing information that’s unique to the person she’s reading (for the younger Borders, it was her mother knowing her future fiancé before Borders herself had met him), and added she’s the first one to say, “Trust me, what I do is absolutely crazy.”
“Even as sensitive as this special is, I feel every reading I do is sensitive and special,” Caputo added. “But think about it: After 20 years, that someone still needed or wanted to have that peace or is searching for something that they couldn’t find over the past 20 years from the loss of their loved one, they received that day.”
