Marlyn Carmen Garcia

Marlyn Carmen Garcia was nothing if not meticulous. In a bedroom she shared with sister Tonia, 17, in her parents’ Brooklyn apartment, it’s easy to tell which side Marlyn slept on.

Her bed is carefully made up with dozens of stuffed Tweety Birds carefully arranged on top. “Each one had its place,” said Tonia. “You could move a Tweety and she’d say, ‘Why is this there?’ ”

The former high school valedictorian and prom queen had even laid out part of her outfit for Sept. 12: a charcoal Tommy Hilfiger hooded sweater with a matching pullover to go underneath.

Garcia, 21, also always took great care to respond to e-mail. Every day she would write something on the computer, which is set up with a Tweety Bird mouse pad in a corner of the bedroom.

“I hope I get to see you Tuesday,” she wrote to her favorite uncle, Dhido Cano, before going to sleep about 11 p.m. on Sept. 10. “I’m going into work a little late because I want to vote.”

The day of the World Trade Center disaster was also the scheduled day of New York’s mayoral primaries, and Garcia cared deeply about politics. A file clerk at Marsh USA Inc. on the 100th floor of the center’s north tower and a full-time college student, she dreamed of graduating and working toward her master’s degree.

Garcia’s father, Hector, said his daughter recently told him that she was writing a letter for each member of the family. “But we have checked all over her room and we can’t find anything,” he said. The family plans to contact Microsoft Corp. to obtain Marlyn’s computer password in hopes that the letters are stored in the hard drive.

Times staff writers Seema Mehta, Booth Moore and Kimi Yoshino contributed to this report.