Sandego.net – On the morning of September 11, 2001, the breakfast cold-food station at Windows on the World — perched 107 stories above Manhattan inside the World Trade Center’s North Tower — had no supervisor. The man scheduled to run that station that day was asleep in his apartment, beside his pregnant wife, when a panicked phone call shattered the quiet. Sekou Siby, a 36-year-old cook originally from Ivory Coast, had traded shifts just days earlier with a younger colleague. That single, ordinary arrangement between two kitchen workers meant he was not standing on the 107th floor when the first plane struck. It also meant his friend was.

Moises Rivas, an Ecuadorian musician in his early twenties who played in a band on weekends, had asked for Sunday off. Siby agreed to cover the shift. On the following Tuesday, Rivas reciprocated, stepping into Siby’s place behind the pass. By the…