Police Officer Mark Joseph Ellis

Mark Ellis, 26, of Huntington, was a transit police officer for the New York City Police Department. After the attacks, he jumped in a taxicab and drove to the World Trade Center. He was last seen helping to evacuate people from the south tower. Ellis was a fearless, by-the-book policeman who always saw the good in others. “He was that cop I would want to pull over my grandmother,” said his former partner, NYPD Det. Eric Semler. The two met in the police academy and became best friends, talking every night on the phone. “My wife called him ‘my other wife,'” Semler said. The two shared a love of fishing and Ellis had just bought a boat; they were to go fishing on it the day Ellis perished. But even Semler couldn’t get his friend to bend the rules. Semler, who smoked at the time, said he would periodically leave his post to have a cigarette. “He wouldn’t go upstairs with me,” he said. His sister Tammy Gardella of New Egypt, N.J., recalls Ellis as “always ready to help a friend or relative with whatever they needed. From car repairs to packing, moving boxes, he was there,” she said. He also knew how to enjoy himself, jet skiing, biking or snow skiing. In the days before Sept. 11, he had proposed to his girlfriend of six years. Also, Ellis had applied for both the Secret Service and FBI; the family learned after his death that he had been accepted to both. “He was a rare person; he had an amazing heart,” Semler said. “He was good people.” The family draws solace from their faith. “Our entire family still misses him but we all know he is happy with God in heaven,” Tammy Gardella said. “I know the peace of God was with Mark that day in a very real way as he went in and out of those towers. Mark literally served God on earth till his last breath.” — Ridgely Ochs