Midnight missiles, a thriller name and a 10-hour desert sprint: Inside the escape of a screenwriter, a canine walker, and a Trump advisor after Iran conflict stranded them in Doha

A group of Americans stranded at the Qatar airport after the war in Iran began found each other and an unlikely path home, after an advisor to President Trump took action.

Brought together on TikTok and Instagram, eight American travelers traveling around the world teamed up for an unlikely journey through the Middle East that they would remember for the rest of their lives.

Now that they have safely returned to their homes in America they can tell their stories.

The Daily Mail interviewed some of the travelers who took the trip.

Sarah Gaither, 27, was on an East African safari when her travel took her through Doha. She planned to take some days to visit the Middle East, but her journey brought her to places she would have never dreamed.

‘We had quite the adventure,’ she told the Daily Mail after returning to her home in Texas.

Sarah’s flight from Doha to Texas was in the air and had flown for about an hour when the pilot got on the intercom to inform the passengers of ‘unsafe airspace’ requiring them to return to the airport.

The plane circled the airport for hours, burning off fuel while they were waiting to land. After touching down, the passengers waited for hours as there was no sign of when they would be allowed to leave.

With little left to do, Sarah documented the journey on her TikTok posting several videos. With no end to their wait in sight, she left the airport and booked a hotel.

A few of the people at the hotel who were scrolling through TikTok recognized her in person and eventually struck up a conversation about what they were going to do. She exchanged information with some of them and wished each other luck as the hours turned into days.

At about 6:00 am, her phone rang and woke her out of a deep sleep.

On the other end of the line was Alex Bruesewitz, one of President Trump’s digital advisors, who informed her that he was also in Doha. He had stopped in the city on his way to visit the United Arab Emirates.

Bruesewitz said that one of her new contacts had given him her information. And he hatched a plan.

‘I had no clue who he was. I probably didn’t answer the most polite for someone who would end up saving my life,’ she recalled.

Bruesewitz offered her a way out. He told her he was organizing a convoy out of the airport to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

‘I was like, um, who are you again? I really was like, is this a scam? Like what’s happening?’ she recalled.

Bruesewitz said he would need to know within the next 30 minutes if she wanted to join the group. 

Skeptical, Sarah said she would let him know. After she hung up the phone, she found Bruesewitz’s Instagram account and started investigating, but when she heard missiles go off near the hotel, her mind was made up.

‘I was like, this is my sign from God. I’m leaving. I gotta go,’ she said.

After agreeing to make the trip, she was soon reassured after meeting Bruesewitz and five other people who he had also gathered.

‘I was like, okay, this is legit. It’s gonna be okay,’ she recalled.

Screenwriter Michael Holstein was trying desperately to reach the group in time.

He was caught in the Qatar airport after traveling to Johannesburg. He expected to have a quick layover in Doha, on his way to Rome for a conference.

He boarded the plane on Saturday and when it was just about ready for takeoff, everyone’s phones went off with an alert. It was chaos.

Passengers waited three hours on the runway before the plane was unloaded and everyone was sent back into the airport.

Holstein and the swarm of passengers waited in the airport, with no idea when they would leave until they heard explosions after missiles were intercepted overhead.

It was clear they were going nowhere soon and he ended up in the business lounge where he fell asleep.

In the middle of the night he was shaken awake by security officials ordering the evacuation of the airport for safety reasons.

The airport of stranded travelers were evacuated to a hotel which was quickly overcrowded. He was sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for another bus when a missile hit a target near the hotel. Everyone was evacuated to a parking garage prompting him to start texting people he knew to look for an exit.

Holstein recalled that through ‘six degrees of separation,’ he finally got a contact for Alex, and was told by a friend that he was organizing a trip out of the airport.

‘He was great, he said, I’m happy to help if I can, but we have to leave in 20 minutes,’ he recalled.

Holstein immediately booked an Uber trip to their location, but it was still 30 minutes away.

Bruesewitz reassured him that he would hold their departure as long as he could, but that he could not promise they would be there when he arrived.

Holstein watched in panic as his driver got lost a couple of times, with the clock ticking down.

As they finally neared their destination, he spotted the waiting convoy of three SUVs and he jumped into one of the vehicles. He hadn’t even met Bruesewitz as they sped off, but he breathed a sigh of relief as the journey began.

Bruesewitz texted him a welcome from one of the other vehicles as they headed off into the unknown.

The vehicles drove for about an hour and a half to the Saudi border, but as the drivers did not have the proper credentials, they took taxis over the border and arranged a new convoy on the Saudi side to take them to the airport in Riyadh.

The entire trip took nearly 10 hours and as the hours dragged on, some of the passengers wondered if they had done the right thing. But as they continued toward their destination they did their best to cheer each other up.

‘It sounds crazy to say, but it was a fun experience, because everybody was really in it together and kind of propping each other up when people would get down,’ Holstein said.

From Saudi Arabia, Bruesewitz booked a private flight for all of them to Athens, Greece, picking up the cost himself. 

The crew was overjoyed as they boarded the flight and returned to the skies with no more delays.

‘Alex was phenomenal. He worked with officials to organize everything. He set everything up, he was amazing,’ Gaither said.

Holstein spoke to the Daily Mail shortly after returning to Washington, DC days after the entire ordeal began.

‘It was amazing and I mean, I still, I don’t know how he pulled it all together, but he really did just an incredible job,’ Holstein said.

As they boarded the plane in Riyadh, Holstein, who works in the film business and as a writer on HBO’s The Wire, joked to Bruesewitz that he might have to make their journey into a movie one day. The group agreed on their text thread that it was a great idea, prompting him to start jotting down some notes.

‘It seems like a good time in America to tell a story like this when people are so at each other’s throats all the time, and, uh, you know, show an example of a time when we weren’t, and it wasn’t about politics or anything,’ he said to the Daily Mail. ‘Whether it’s a script movie or a documentary, it is an amazing story.’

After reaching safety he saw some of the online attacks aimed at Bruesewitz and his efforts, which he found to be lazy and uninformed.

‘There were Democrats in the car, and Republicans in the car, and Independents like myself, and, you know, it sounds corny or whatever, but proud to be an American,’ Holstein said. ‘Everyone pulled together, nothing divisive, no gatekeeping other than here’s a group of people who really wanted to get home and somebody who made it happen.’

After bringing his first group to safety, Bruesewitz kept working. Other stranded American travelers reached out on Instagram to ask for his help as word of their successful journey spread online.

Les and Jamie Kreis were on their flight home to Dallas-Fort Worth with Les’s eighty-one year old mother and eighty-year old father after completing a two week trip in Egypt with Egyptian explorer and archaeologist Graham Hancock.

They had just had the trip of a lifetime, but they were unaware of just how memorable the trip home would be.

In Qatar, they boarded their flight home to Texas on Saturday morning and flew for over an hour before the pilot informed the passengers that the plane was turning around and going back to the Qatar airport.

Jamie, confused, turned to her husband to inquire what was happening but Les had already figured it out.

‘Trump must have just invaded Iran,’ he replied.

After returning to the Qatar airport, they waited over a day and a half for their suspended flight to get back in the air.

In the middle of the night, a group of guards came banging on the door ordering everyone out as quickly as possible.

The fearful passengers rushed outside and loaded on buses where they were escorted to a nearby hotel.

Les and Jamie were separated from Les’ parents who were sent to a nearby stadium, and they spent hours frantically working to relocate them.

Lost, upset, they finally worked with Qatar officials to reunite but they were still stranded at the hotel with no way home.

As they waited, Jamie was scrolling through Instagram when she discovered news of Bruesewitz’s unlikely journey.

She messaged him with details of their plight and he responded immediately.

‘We were hesitant at first, but we realized that he was just there to help,’ she said.

Les did some more research and continued their conversation with Alex to make sure everything checked out.

‘There’s always an element of risk to it, but there was also an element of trust in it too,’ he said.

Bruesewitz sent two SUVs to pick them up and whisked them away to safety.

The Kreis family spoke to the Daily Mail as they were awaiting a flight to London and finally to their home in Fort Worth.

‘Alex was such a godsend, a true angel. No questions, no money wanted, he just wanted to help,’ Jamie said. ‘We’re forever grateful for him getting us out of that war zone.’

Other stories keep making their way into the news. Lawyer Wajeeh Mahmood from Los Angeles revealed on Instagram that after he was stranded in Qatar, Bruesewitz messaged him on Instagram to help him coordinate private transportation to Saudi Arabia.

Anjali Sharma, a Maryland native was on her way to India for a cousin’s wedding when she was trapped for five days in Qatar. When she saw reports of how Bruesewitz and his group managed to make it out, she grew frustrated.

She posted an exasperated post on TikTok announcing her plight.

‘I didn’t realize I have to be TikTok famous now to get out of a country that I’ve been stranded now for five days not in the Middle East,’ she said. ‘What about the rest of us?’

Within minutes of Sharma’s post, Bruesewitz reached out to help her find transport to Saudi Arabia.

‘His quick response and willingness to step in and help, made a situation that felt impossible suddenly manageable,’ she told the Baltimore Banner.

All told, Bruesewitz helped about 30 Americans evacuate from Qatar and back safely home. 

Arriving home after 8000 miles and multiple long days of traveling, Gaither hugged her mother closely and posted the video on TikTok, concluding her incredible journey.

‘For all those wondering, yes, my mom cried when I made it home,’ she informed her followers.

Holstein was back in Washington, DC, stuck in traffic on the Beltway.

‘I mean there’s no more appropriate welcome home than to be sitting and crossing the American Legion Bridge for 40 minutes,’ he chuckled. ‘Kind of makes me wish I was back in Doha.’