''He would come back from fishing trips loaded with bags and bags of fish and fish fillets,'' she remembered, laughing, ''And he would just give it away, up and down our street. So everywhere we'd go, all over town, there would be people thanking him for the fish, you know, saying, 'We just had a barbecue, Jack, it was great.' ''

KATIE MARIE McCLOSKEY

Simply Awesome

Even in grade school in South Bend, Ind., Katie Marie McCloskey and Cherese Djakiewicz were best friends, and somewhere along the way -- maybe it was at Indiana University together -- they both began sharing a dream: to move to New York City. And so, when Cherese moved to Manhattan a couple of years ago, it was inevitable that Katie would follow. It took a while, but Katie finally arrived to share Cherese's apartment three months ago. Six weeks ago Katie found a job on the 97th floor of 1 World Trade Center, staffing the computer help desk of Directfit Inc., rushing to the aid of employees.

Now her sisters, Leslie and Julie, her brother, Noah, and her father, Richard, are in Manhattan searching for her. The other night, they discovered Katie's journal in Cherese's apartment. ''She wrote 'I made it!' and that she loved it in New York,'' said her mother, Anne. Actually, Katie's exact words were that she had found ''an awesome job in an awesome place in an awesome city.''

KALYAN K. SARKAR

Building Bridges and Family

The idea of constructing things for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was so fundamental to Kalyan K. Sarkar, a 53-year-old civil engineer, he would have found the destruction of two skyscrapers unimaginable. ''He is a man who spent his life building -- bridges and tunnels and just about anything the Port Authority put up,'' said his son Kishan, who was looking forward to his father's birthday party two Saturdays from now.

The family finds some hope in the fact that Kalyan really knew buildings. He phoned his wife, Anarkali, from Tower 1 to explain that he and 12 of his co-workers were trapped on the 64th floor, the elevators were sealed, and they were headed to the stairs. Then he was cut off. Kishan, a computer programmer in New Jersey, is grateful that his father asked him to leave work early Monday night to come to their home in Westwood, N.J., to help his father with some Web site work. ''I was lucky to be there,'' he said.

SHREYAS RANGANATH

Bollywood and Nan

They call Bangalore the Silicon Valley of India, and when the city, in southern India, became a hot place for high-tech enterprise several years ago, Shreyas Ranganath, 26, threw himself into the world of software design. ''For him, it became an addiction,'' Manoj Baalebail, a longtime friend, said. ''He had a great love for software.''

Last month, that love brought Shreyas to New York on a three-month project for Marsh & McLennan, on the 97th floor of 1 World Trade Center. Mr. Baalebail, who works for the same consulting company, put Shreyas and another software designer, Shashi Kiran Kadaba, up in his Hackensack home, where they spent their evenings cooking elaborate Indian meals or watching Hindi films. ''He appreciated Hollywood movies, but he had a great taste for Indian movies.'' Monday night, the men shared a feast to celebrate the birthday of Krishna, the Hindu god. ''It was a wonderful dinner we had,'' Mr. Baalebail said. ''I just don't want to think of it as his last.''