Memories Recovered From WTC Site

Amid the concrete and steel scooped from the World Trade Center ruins are bracelets and lockets, watches and wallets, key rings and cell phones.

Police are beginning the monumental task of returning thousands of personal items to the grieving families and those who got out alive.

“If we can somehow help to alleviate someone’s pain and give them back a fond memory, we’d love to,” said Deputy Inspector Jack Trabitz, commanding officer of the Police Department’s Property Clerk Division.

For four months, the department has been storing and cataloging the ash-covered belongings. Recently it began returning items that clearly show a name, such as driver’s licenses, credit cards, date books and jewelry with an inscription.

But the department is still trying to determine the proper way to return other, less easily identifiable items.

Victims groups say one idea under consideration is a book, similar to a catalog, that would show photographs of found items. Another possibility is a showroom where families could look through bins of personal effects.

“We’re going to explore everything, whether it’s show viewing, whether it’s anything. Those decisions haven’t been made yet,” Trabitz said.

Mary Ellen Salamone, whose husband, John Salamone, worked for the bond firm Cantor Fitzgerald, said she favors the catalog process because it seems more organized and less likely to lead to errors and confusion.

Salamone hopes her husband’s 18-inch gold chain and crucifix will be found. She gave it to him 12 years ago, before they married, and he never took it off.

“For some of us, this is all we have left,” said Salamone, whose husband’s body has not been found. “My husband has an empty grave right now, and he might forever. To get part of his chain back would mean everything to me.”

Officers in the Property Clerk Division will eventually compare items to the descriptions that families wrote on missing-persons reports. Personal items with engravings and other identifying markings are most likely to be traced that way.

Trabitz’s division--which usually keeps track of seized drugs, stolen property, murder weapons and other evidence--recently began sending letters to families whose identifiable property had been found. The division has sent about 500 letters; about 100 families have claimed property.

Personal effects make their way to police in several ways. Some items are found by authorities at ground zero; others are discovered by FBI agents sorting through the debris that has been taken to a Staten Island landfill.

The items are numbered, cataloged and shelved in the basement of police headquarters.

Belongings found with remains are sent to the medical examiner, where they often are used to help identify the victim. Once the victim is matched and the family is notified, the items are returned.

Detective Ed Galanek, who has worked at the landfill, said the heaps of personal belongings are constant reminders of all the lives lost.

“You don’t dwell on the fact that someone’s lost, because you couldn’t do this every day and look at this,” Galanek said.

Some of the property belongs to people who survived the terrorist attack but who left behind such things as their wallets and handbags. They are happy to have their property returned, Trabitz said, but their reactions cannot compare to those of people whose relatives died.

“That property has even more spectacular and special meaning,” he said, “because it’s a link to the past.”