OTx2-- If nothing else in the last two weeks, we are all reevaluating our priorities...Some things we thought counted before Sept 11th, just simply aren't important.
Here's a story from The Seattle Times about a High School Drop Out who appears to have saved hundreds of people.... America will NEVER be beaten by these terrorists when we have people like these heros...."ordinary people doing extraordinary things"....
High-school dropout saved hundreds before escaping himself
By Patrick May
Knight Ridder Newspapers
RON T. ENNIS / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Security Guard Gabriel Torres "always helps people," says his girlfriend. He said he kept his mind on his son, 2.
NEW YORK — He could have left his post. He could have fled. But security guard Gabriel Torres stayed where he was, in the basement concourse of the World Trade Center, watching frightened office workers and even fellow guards swarm up the stalled escalator to safety.
For the next hour, while the complex he had worked at since 1998 collapsed around him, Torres remained below to help others. As the power died and smoke and dust filled his underground cavern, the high-school dropout from Brooklyn showed hundreds of people the way out. He then spent 45 minutes helping two firefighters search four floors of pitch-dark basement, just in case someone had been left behind. Then he led them through a crumbling warren of underground passages that he knew like the back of his hand.
All the time, Torres thought mostly of Nicholas.
"My son was about to turn 2 years old," said Torres, 29.
"He doesn't even know me; he's so little, so I had to survive. But I also have a responsibility to help people around me. It just wasn't part of my instinct to run away."
Today, Torres bears the scars of his heroism. Stitches crisscross a 2-inch gash in his forehead where an exploding glass door flew into his face. He leans on a wooden cane because his leg was cut open by flying debris. His $10.61-an-hour job is uncertain. His employer, Summit Security, has not phoned him or his co-workers since the tragedy.
His stepmother is lost in the rubble. Twenty of his co-workers are dead or missing. And he can't sleep much, because even the sound of wind and rain brings back the horror.
But he has Nicholas. And Nicholas still has a father.
"I feel like I did my duty that day, and it felt great," said Torres. "But seeing Nicholas smile when it was all over was the happiest moment of my life."
Many ordinary people did extraordinary things that dark day in the depths of the heights of the World Trade Center. Many perished in the process. Some have no explanation for why they risked their lives for others.
For Torres, it was a simple: Duty means putting others' welfare before your own.
"You can't lose your head," he said as he waited with dozens of fellow guards at a Salvation Army office, hoping to get help in paying his bills. "I had to focus on the job at hand, because if I lose my head, I'm no good to my friends, I'm no good to my family, I'm no good to anybody."
The day began as usual at 5:30 a.m., when Torres showed up for roll call at the Trade Center.
This day, he was sent to the concourse beneath Building No. 5 to check the IDs of vendors.
The first boom came at 8:48 a.m. "I thought construction workers had dropped one of those huge metal plates," he said. "Then I saw people running in every direction."
He saw a guard, covered in dust, bleeding from the back of his head. It was serious enough that Torres radioed for help. People were fleeing up to the street.
Then his beeper went off. His mother, Nidia Rodriguez, was trying to reach him from the police station in Brooklyn where she works as a civilian administrator. He called her back.
"We were watching it on TV," she said. "I told him a plane had hit the tower and we could see the second plane about to hit the other one. So I told him to get out. And then the phone went dead."
The lights went out when the second plane struck at 9:06.
"I thought that plane was coming right through the concourse," he said. "I've never heard such a noise. I got scared and rolled up in a ball on the floor."
Then it was quiet. He heard a friend's voice and crawled to her. Others gathered in the dark and joined hands. Torres and fellow guard William Fields led them out.
Fields saw Torres remain behind. "We had just helped out the last 100 people but Gabriel went back in to see if he could get more," Fields recalled. "I passed him on my way out. He said he wanted to stay and help."
Two firefighters with flashlights appeared to Torres out of the darkness. "They said, 'We don't know our way around here; can you help us look for people who might be down below?' " Torres led them through the now-deserted concourse and two levels down to where the commuter trains ran.
Then the rumbling above began. Not knowing one of the towers was collapsing, Torres heard what sounded like a hurricane over his head. "We all dove, and this door exploded off its hinges. A piece of it hit my forehead." Again he balled up on the ground, not realizing his leg had been sliced open, too, by flying steel and glass.
Torres and the firefighters fled for the concourse escalator but found only mangled metal. "We climbed and climbed for 10 minutes until we found a hole and saw daylight," Torres said. There was debris and fire all around. They were outside but trapped by mountains of debris and blinded by the dust.
They screamed for help. One firefighter was close to passing out from smoke inhalation. Torres' leg was bleeding badly. Suddenly, they saw other firefighters in the distance, telling them to go down into the concourse again and up through a hole on the other side. They finally emerged near the remains of the Marriott World Trade Center hotel.
"The Fire Department called us at the station at 2 p.m.," said Torres' mother. "They said my son had been trapped in the rubble for two hours. ... They said my son had a concussion and a lot of cuts but that he was alive."
Torres' girlfriend isn't surprised by his actions. "He always helps people," said Vivien Vicente. "I guess you'd call him a gentleman."
Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company
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