A Quiet Existence Dissolved by Anthrax

She would leave her one-bedroom Bronx flat in the early afternoon on most days, en route to her late-shift job as a stockroom employee at a Manhattan hospital.

In the dingy lobby of her six-story apartment building, Kathy Nguyen would often run into the mailman--saying a quick hello as he put letters in the double row of brass-colored metal boxes.

Then it was out the door and into the courtyard where children played, a few dozen steps farther and through the locked gate. She would take a left on Freeman Street--her home for 22 years--and walk up a block before making a right.

Past the carwash, past the Enterprise car rental shop, past La India Mexican restaurant and up the steps at the Whitlock Avenue train station, where she would board the Number 6 going south into the city.

What had been nothing more than the daily routine of a quiet woman who fled Vietnam for America in the final days of the war there, this week became a trail of clues for investigators scrambling to solve the mystery of how Nguyen became anthrax’s fourth fatality.

So far there are no clear answers in the case, which has forced health officials and investigators to again reexamine beliefs about who is at risk from the deadly bacteria.

In Nguyen’s gritty neighborhood, which overlooks the interstate highway and massive power lines--neighbors have faced two days of questions from law enforcement and health officials about Nguyen’s last few weeks. The 61-year-old woman, who lived alone, was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital on Sunday and was put on a ventilator almost immediately.

Her condition was so grave investigators were unable to learn from her where she had been and whom she had seen in the days before she got sick.

The trail so far has led FBI agents and investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to two obvious locations: her home and her workplace.

They descended on her home before dawn Tuesday, massing on the sidewalk in front of the building just a few short hours after her diagnosis was announced. Startled neighbors awoke to find uniformed officials, some wearing full hazardous materials suits, breaking through the front door of 3R, Nguyen’s third floor apartment.

Within hours, FBI agents were knocking on doors and stopping people in the halls: When had they last seen Kathy? Had they seen anything strange in recent weeks? Was anyone else ill?

Many in the building said they had little to share. Nguyen was well-liked by many but known by few. “Kathy,” said neighbor Carol Soto, “kept to herself.”

On Wednesday, Wing Chung made his regular stop to deliver the building’s mail. Chung, 45, has had the route for five years. For the last several weeks he has worn purple latex gloves as a precaution. He said Nguyen got an average amount of mail, nothing out of the ordinary: “Just your normal bills and letters and magazines.”

“I feel so bad. She was such a great woman,” Chung said. “My wife is so scared for me because if [Nguyen] got it through the mail she thinks that I delivered the letter.”

But preliminary tests done for anthrax contamination in Nguyen’s apartment came back negative. Neighbors said officials returned Wednesday afternoon to take more samples.

Until then, however, there was no evidence of danger--no yellow police tape, no guard posted at Nguyen’s door.

Then an officer quizzed reporters and neighbors: Had they touched the door or mailbox?

“You didn’t do that, did you?” said NYPD Det. Gerard DiMuro. “That’s incredibly dangerous. This is a criminal investigation.”

Fifteen train stops from the start of her trip, Nguyen would emerge from the subway on the corner of 68th Street and Lexington Avenue and walk up two flights of steps. There, on the chic streets of Manhattan, where tuxedoed doormen greet guests and skyscrapers cast shadows, it seems another world from where she started.

Her trips would be uncrowded as she rode against the flow of commuter traffic streaming from the city to the outer boroughs. At the other end of Nguyen’s 40-minute commute, the scene outside the nine-story Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital was subdued Wednesday. Like her apartment, it has been swabbed for anthrax, with preliminary results coming back negative, only adding to the puzzle.

Outside the building, locked doors and a row of parked police vehicles marked the scene of a criminal investigation.

Nguyen’s longtime friend Nancy Rivera said she last saw her a week ago. Nguyen, she said, loved her work. Most days she was on the 4 to 11 p.m. shift, delivering supplies throughout the hospital. Some nights she worked until midnight.

Friends and neighbors gathered at sunset Wednesday in the courtyard where Nguyen would return from work late each night. To honor the devout Roman Catholic, they hung at the building’s front door a cross made of red and white carnations. Joined by trick-or-treaters dressed as angels, witches and even an Uncle Sam, they made a winding path of candles and recited the rosary.

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Huffstutter reported from New York and Garvey from Washington.