Resident was part of recovery team after attacks on World Trade Center

Steve Capizzo combed through the World Trade Center rubble in hopes of finding survivors.

But death's sour smell was everywhere. There were just bits and pieces of people wedged in among the twisted, burning steel.

Capizzo's rescue partner kicked a shoe out of the way. There was still a foot inside.

Capizzo, 62, was among a group of union workers helping New York police officers and firefighters search for missing people. The goal was to help keep first responders as safe as possible by building bridges and tunnels through and around the debris while helping to protect what was left of the building.

They pulled 16-hour days, seven days a week, putting up emergency tents and building boxes for body parts.

The unions lost 18 men the day the towers fell -- some were Capizzo's closest friends. Rescue workers never found any trace of their bodies. One of Capizzo's best friends, Benjamin "Benny" Millman, had been working on the 10th floor installing office cubicles. He couldn't get downstairs when the planes hit. He was told to go to the roof, where a rescue helicopter would pick him up.

But it didn't happen that way.

The intense heat and height of the flames on the roof combined with an easterly wind made it impossible for the helicopters to land.

Benny called his wife on the phone. Then he jumped.

"We couldn't find Benny," Capizzo said. "So, Benny was in the back of my mind. I kept thinkin', 'Where are you, man?' We had a close relationship. Benny and I broke bread at my table."

On his last day as a union carpenter, Capizzo was clearing away rubble at the Verizon building across from where the Twin Towers had fallen three months earlier. A piece of debris was stuck in a building facade. Capizzo pulled on its end to dislodge the piece.

On the other end was a woman's scalp. She had long blonde hair, just like his wife.

"I'm leavin' this job," Capizzo told his coworker that December day.

And he did.

"The last day I was there I was spittin' up blood," said Capizzo, who has only 45 percent breathing capacity since the rescue effort. "I'd cough, and it was just there. I was exhausted. Breathin' in all that dust, the chemicals, who knows what they had on the planes? I live 101 percent of my life now at 45 percent."

The day that terrorists hijacked planes and smashed them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Capizzo was supposed to be standing outside of the World Trade Center passing out fli ers for a mayoral candidate his union supported.

Instead, he called into work to celebrate his 33rd wedding anniversary with his wife, Patty. His son Keith called in, too. Keith worked with Benny and was supposed to be with him that morning.

"I would have lost my son," Capizzo said in disbelief.

He moved out to Las Vegas in 2006 to cope with his breathing troubles. His wife died of respiratory failure two years later. She was 58. They were married for 40 years.

His wedding anniversary is forever tied to the Twin Towers tragedy. He doesn't like it when people call the event an anniversary.

"I had an anniversary on 9/11, and I'm not gonna put that tragedy in between that," Capizzo said. "It was a tragedy that happened a decade ago. It's part of my life. It will always be there."

He breaks out into a small coughing fit. That's the asbestosis flaring up in both of his lungs.

"I can't walk far because my breathing is diminished," Capizzo said. "It's ridiculous. Tall buildings bother me now. You could hold a gun to my head, I will not go in between buildings or in a building where there are too many stories."

Don't call him a hero, though. And don't call him brave. Heroes are the innocent people who died, he said. Brave are the first responders who searched for survivors.

"We did the best we could," Capizzo said. "We were looking for that hope. For anybody. For anything. We were finding all of this death around us. I hope to never see that again in my lifetime. I never wanted to see that in the first place. I've tried to forget, but you can't forget."

Contact Paradise/Downtown and North Las Vegas View reporter Kristi Jourdan at kjourdan@viewnews.com or 383-0492.