Father-Daughter Duo Run the Boston Marathon After Surviving 2013 Bombing (Exclusive)

Isabella Zito was nine years old when she watched the unimaginable happen. 

Zito and her family were waiting for her dad, Jamie Zito, to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, as horror struck. They were tracking Jamie’s running pace and expected him to cross the finish line any minute when the first bomb went off. 

Isabella thought it was fireworks at the time, but when the second explosion went off, her mom knew something was wrong. She took Isabella and her five-year-old sister under her arms and brought them into the Boston Public Library. They heard screaming, and in the chaos, someone suggested there may be even more explosives in the library, so they broke down the door to get out. 

They tried to contact Jamie, who was being held in Kenmore Square, one mile from the finish line. He feared the worst for his family the second he heard news of the attack and ran to find them in the chaos once things cleared.

Three people were killed in the Boston Marathon bombing: Krystle Marie Campbell, Lingzi Lu, and Martin Richard, who was 8 years old at the time of his death.

In addition to the fatalities, over 260 people were injured in the explosions, and at least 17 people lost limbs.

No one in the Zito family was seriously injured. After Jamie found his wife and kids, they all piled into the car to get home to Rhode Island. Once there, Isabella’s dad said, “One day we’re going to run this together. We’re not going to let this take us down.” 

On April 21, 2025, after fundraising for the Special Olympics, the father-daughter duo did just that.

Isabella, now 21, is a senior at Northeastern University. She spoke with PEOPLE exclusively about finding the strength and courage to return to the Boston Marathon and cross the finish line with her father. 

“I wanted to run it to show you can do the hard thing. These things can’t take you down. We can’t allow these things to overpower and scare us,” she shares. “We need to stand up to them.”

Isabella ran the whole course with Jamie. At first, she was worried about keeping up with him and was, admittedly, a little “scared.” However, she said that running with her dad was “helpful.” 

“It was emotional. Before we got to the start line, we both started crying,” she shares. “We made this promise to each other 12 years ago, and we were finally doing it. I cried the whole last three miles because it was both hard and really emotional.”

“For a long time, I couldn’t go back to Boylston Street because it was a traumatic place to go. When I came to college here in Boston, my whole first year, I went home that year for the marathon. I couldn’t stay in the city. Now, fast forward three years, and I ran the marathon.”

Crossing the finish line brought Isabella back to that moment 12 years ago, but she didn’t let it break her.

“I blacked out for the last five minutes, but after I crossed the finish line, I was super emotional because running a marathon is hard and emotional,” she says.

“I have a connection to it and thought, ‘This broke me down, but I didn’t let it break me forever.’ I was able to come back and overcome it, which was emotional for me. I cried for 30 minutes after.”

The father-daughter duo finished at the same time, down to the same second.