Senior Court Officer Mitchel Scott Wallace

Mitchel Scott Wallace, 34, of Mineola, a court officer at Supreme Court in Manhattan, had just gotten off the subway on his way to work when the first plane hit. A former paramedic, he raced to the scene to help. He bandaged at least one woman’s badly burned legs before running inside. She survived. His remains were never found. Rita Wallace keeps her son’s gold initialed ring in a small glass case in her Bayside home. It was recovered five years ago, a full half decade after his death. And she keeps the partially disintegrated service revolver he carried, as well. It’s all she ever got back. She wasn’t surprised when she saw the last photo of her missing son, taken the morning of Sept. 11, helping a woman whose legs had been burned in the attack. “There was no doubt that Mitch would go straight there to help,” she said. “He was doing what he loved to do: help people.” Wallace’s sister appeared on TV with the photograph, and the woman contacted the family. He had used his paramedic skills to wrap her legs in gauze, after someone had carried her down 80 flights of stairs. “In fact, when she got into the ambulance and later to the hospital, they said whoever bandaged her with gauze did a good job,” Rita Wallace said. Shortly before Sept. 11, Wallace had taken the sergeant’s exam. “I remember saying to him, how do you think you did? He said, ‘I’ll find out soon enough,’ but 9/11 came and he never did find out.” The notification came later. He had passed the exam. – Melanie Lefkowitz