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In a time of peril, small gestures are magnified: An outstretched hand becomes a pull to safety; the loan of a cell phone becomes a lifeline. Viewed through the eyes of memory, such gestures crystallize and become jewels.

So it is for AT&T New York and New Jersey operations director Joseph LaMonda. On the night of Sept. 11, firefighters escorted him to the AT&T office adjacent to Ground Zero, so he could check the carrier's equipment.

From a 10th-floor balcony, LaMonda says, Ground Zero looked like the opening scene of "The Terminator." One firefighter, after laboring 14 hours in the rubble, got a good look at the devastation from above and cried.

LaMonda offered his satellite phone so the firefighter could contact the family he hadn't spoken to since before the planes hit the towers. "It was so emotional. It was, 'I'm OK, I'm fine'--and his wife crying on the phone," LaMonda says. "Before I knew it, there was a line [of firefighters], waiting to call their families."

"Those men were exhausted. You could see it in their faces," LaMonda says. "There are no words you can say. They lost colleagues they knew 10 years or more."