Joseph Trombino

Francis Joseph Trombino never lived in Rockland County, but his life was forever intertwined with the leafy northern suburbs.Trombino, a career Brinks security guard, was severely wounded during the 1981 Brinks armored truck robbery in Nanuet in which two police officers and his partner, Peter Paige, were killed. Trombino lost the use of one arm, but remained on the job for another 20 years � until the Sept. 11 terror attacks.Trombino, 68, of Clifton, N.J., was killed as he attempted to drive the armored truck in his care out of harm's way during the attacks on the World Trade Center. Years earlier, he had narrowly missed a similar fate, having just left the towers' garage when terrorists detonated a bomb beneath the soaring skyscrapers.In recent years, Trombino's link to Rockland has prompted some to suggest that his name be added to the county's Sept. 11 memorial, as one of eight terror attack victims with indirect ties to the county and its towns and villages.Trombino's loss in the 2001 attacks resonated with Brinks workers worldwide, far beyond his New Jersey home and the Lower Hudson Valley suburb where he narrowly escaped death in 1981. In 2008, Antonio Carlos Passador, a fellow company employee from Brinks Brazil noted on the World Trade Center memorial website, www.9-11heroes.us, that Trombino remains on the minds of his fellow security company workers."I leave here my feelings and my homage to my dead colleague," he wrote.

- Jorge Fitz-Gibbon