A Rio Hondo man was working inside the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building — while his wife watched from her workplace across the Potomac River.

There were thousands of people inside the Pentagon that morning, including, Robert Lopez, who now calls the Rio Grande Valley Home.

"I lost a couple of friends," Robert said.

It has been 25 years since terrorists hijacked Flight 77 and slammed it into the Pentagon, killing 64 people on board and 125 inside the building.

Robert was inside the Pentagon watching news coverage of the Twin Towers, unaware his building would be targeted next.

"I was working at the Joint Chiefs of Staff," Robert said. "And I took a walk with a friend of mine toward the center of the Pentagon and at that point I heard what I thought was something impacting or blowing up, and I told my friend we had just been hit. And all of sudden the alarms started going off. All the sirens and call to evacuate the Pentagon."

Archival video captured the evacuation: men and women fleeing as thick black smoke billowed into the sky. Robert was somewhere in the crowd, while his wife, Becca, watched and waited across the Potomac River.

"I was trying to get a hold of Robert and I couldn't get a hold of him," Becca said.

"We exited the Pentagon in the opposite direction of where the plane hit and when we got to the door and looked up, you couldn't see the sky, it was just black smoke," Robert said.

"You could just see the smoke, black smoke billowing into the sky," Becca said.

The rescue efforts started almost immediately. There is video from that day after the attack, but Robert saw what happened before the cameras showed up. He saw the injured and he tried to help.

"We had to commandeer vehicles of people and you know, everybody volunteered their car. If they had a truck, an SUV that could load up the injured and transport them to the hospital," Robert said.

Those memories are still fresh, even in retirement.

More than 1,700 miles from the Pentagon, Robert and Becca have lived so much life since that awful day.

A Channel 5 News crew met with the couple in McAllen at the Veterans War Memorial of Texas.

They're now grandparents, their oldest grandchild almost the age of the young men and women who joined the military after 9/11, and died, in war, for their country. 

"Those guys are the heroes. They stepped up in the face of all this tragedy," Robert said. "This is the best country in the world and regardless of what differences we have, I would never want to live anywhere but here."

Watch the video above for the full story.