The executive offices ran along the perimeter of the building, which was angular, so each of them had a “corner office” space to feel important. Us young employees, on the other hand, were in cubicles in the center of the floor plan. Our workstations had low walls, so if I wanted to look at a colleague while yelling at them across the room, I could. We were a friendly and rowdy bunch with a heavy workload to share, so it wasn’t unusual for us to shout at each other.

My desk was a revolving door of people. People liked me. It might have been because I had candy in my desk drawer, but I think it was because I laughed a lot.

Although I took my job seriously, I didn’t have many career ambitions. I wasn’t a threat, unlike most of my colleagues who were eager to become powerful brokers. They were Wall Street wolf cubs; I wasn’t.

I worked with Derek Thornton, who was the CEO of Fixed Income for Credit Suisse/First Boston. My job was hard to define. If he were the Lone Ranger, I was his Tonto.

I think people suspected that our relationship went beyond the professional level. We had a very informal way of interacting. I pointed out when he said something stupid. He asked if he could get me a coffee when he went to get one for himself. It was probably one of the healthiest relationships I’ve ever had with a man.

The day it happened, Derek had scheduled a meeting at the CSFB offices downtown. He had to take the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor train from Princeton, but he was late, as usual. Whenever that happened, he would toss me the keys to his BMW and ask for a ride to the train station. I had done it that day as well, as usual.

Not long after returning to my workstation, I noticed that Chris Jacobson from Analytics had come out of his office. He seemed puzzled. I got up and tried to squint at his computer screen to see what he was working on. There were no usual formulas and charts; instead, there was an image of a building.

Chris told us that a plane had just gone through a building.

It sounded completely absurd.

Our offices in Princeton were brand new. A new construction. The workers hadn’t installed TVs on the walls yet. So, we didn’t have access to live video footage of the ongoing events. There it was, the same grainy image of the building with a black hole; now it was on each of our computer screens.

The department meeting at the New York office was scheduled for 10am that day.

Derek could have called in via teleconference, but he preferred to meet face-to-face with the guys who didn’t have the opportunity to work with him in person every day. He was busy, traveled a lot for work, and didn’t have time to develop personal relationships with his employees.

This was one of the reasons I was good at my job. I was his eyes and ears. I knew who was doing what and how well they were doing it. I fed information to Derek, in pieces, because he couldn’t digest it all at once. Consequently, we were in constant contact. His phone was practically glued to his ear, and I was almost always the voice on the other end.

I called him around 9am, but there was no signal on the phone.

I called the New York office’s landline. Same thing.

Frustrated by the lack of access to news, I decided to go home and bring my clock radio to the office to listen to the ongoing radio broadcasts. It was a 30-minute round trip. I remember it was a beautiful day, and I had rolled down the car windows as if it were a joyride. Now I fear that my memories make me seem insensitive, but the truth is that the rhythms of that day were unstable. We received detailed information in brief, non-continuous time fragments. What we did in the time between the news varied from person to person. Me? I remember that drive. Clearly. Because it was after everyone found out that I could contact the people in our New York office, who were lost.

Luanne, Derek’s wife, was on the line that was ringing when I returned from picking up the radio. “Have you heard from him?” she immediately asked. The same question would be repeated many times throughout the day.

The truth was that I suspected Derek was stuck on the train. NJ Transit was known to be late. And even if the train had arrived on time, finding a taxi to get to the Twin Towers before 9am would have been impossible at that hour.

The news was a repetitive nightmare. I’m sure you remember it too. No one knew what was really happening or what would happen in the future. The first phone call from one of the lost ones came in just as a near-migraine began to form in the back of my head.

It was Chester. He was alive.

Chester Hodgkins was supposed to attend the same meeting as Derek. Only Chester was early that day. He was an ambitious young man, 23 years old, who had recently graduated from college and moved from Portland, Oregon. Chester was charismatic and fun, with a round face and perpetually rosy cheeks. He always seemed to blush.

He was scared but safe. He called me because he wasn’t sure where he was going. My contact was high up in his phone’s address book. Not because we were particularly close friends or colleagues, but only because I was the person who usually had answers to Chester’s questions. He loved New York and knew I spent a lot of time in the city. I walked there often and knew the streets quite well. Chester knew this. That’s probably why he called me, explaining why he chose to call me instead of someone else.

I detailed the easiest way for him to walk uptown to our other offices on Park Avenue, just north of Grand Central Station. It would take him a little while, but he didn’t mind. The phone connection dropped unexpectedly while I was in the middle of a sentence. Another call. This time from John Setaro. John was a risk assessment specialist who had been working as a consultant since I started at the company. He had chosen this role over that of Executive Vice President because he wanted to maintain his permanent residence in Southern California, where he could enjoy the beautiful weather. John was in New York for the same meeting. He had booked a room in a Tribeca hotel, just north of the World Trade Center. He hadn’t yet left his room when the planes hit the buildings.

David Lee and Gil Stewart from Analytics were together. I was a bit surprised that they had my number. I hesitated to put John on hold to answer their call, but John was safe in his hotel room, and David and Gil said they were lost in the city.

I was on speed dial for many colleagues. Unbeknownst to me, I was near the top of their favorite contacts list, which made it easy for them to reach me. I was high up because I was important, as I was Derek’s right hand.

Verizon Telecom service, to which all the office phones were subscribed, was unstable. The use of cell phones was unpredictable. Due to the continuous attempts to redial calls, batteries were draining, and the guys decided to call me to save what little power they had left.

“Please contact my wife and let her know I’m okay,” Brad Moss asked. Brad was a native New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn. He was walking alone, away from the chaos, and he was concerned not only about his family but also the guys he supervised as a Commercial Operations Manager. He didn’t know where everyone was.

Could I help him track them down?

Oddly, during a bored weekend the previous summer, I had memorized everyone’s cell phone numbers. It was an easy system; they all had the same three numbers at the beginning: 627. I just needed to remember the last four digits. Brad: last four digits 3541, area code 718. Chester: last four digits 8993, area code 609. And so on. So, it was easy to respond to his request to find someone. Even though mobile phone service was unstable, it didn’t discourage me. I was given an achievable task, and I was grateful for it.

Everyone wanted to know where their group was and if they were safe. By the end of the day, Chester, John, David, Gil, Brad, and twenty-two other people I worked with were safe and accounted for. Even Derek. I found out I was right that he was stuck on the train.