NY Post Online
Firefighter Gregory Saucedo may be the baby of the family, but his three brothers have always known he was the strongest of them all.
But brothers Paul, Christopher and Stephen realize strength alone can't bring him back from the rubble of the World Trade Center, where he went missing Tuesday.
Gregory, 32, a 10-year FDNY veteran, was stationed at Ladder Co. 5 at Houston Street and Sixth Avenue. He disappeared amid the rubble of the north tower while seeking to save strangers with his boss, Lt. Vincent Giammona.
"They were two physically fit firefighters," Stephen Saucedo, 33, said at the family home in Mill Basin, Brooklyn.
Stephen is a probationary firefighter who spent 12 agonizing and fruitless hours looking for his brother at the disaster scene.
"He spent an hour running up and down stairs saving hundreds of people," Stephen recounted, noting how other firefighters, those lucky enough to return, last saw Greg and his lieutenant passing them on the 37 floor in the north tower, "going higher up," before their disappearance.
The brothers plan a memorial Mass for their missing sibling on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. at Mary Queen of Heaven Church on E. 57th St. and Avenue M.
But their mood isn't sad.
To hear the Saucedo brothers tell it, they can't remain sad for long, as they have memories of Gregory's madcap personality.
"Greg was a very, very social person, a gregarious personality," explained Christopher, 36, a professor of sculpture at the University of New Orleans. "He literally had four or five best friends."
"He was like a big, goofy kid," added Stephen.
Stephen, who's normally assigned to Ladder 13 in Manhattan, was working for Engine 284 in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn the day of the attack.
Grimy and tired, Stephen trudged miles in full uniform to his brother's firehouse, hoping against hope to see his brother alive.
"All I could hear was my mother saying, ‘Watch out for your brother!'"
Late that fateful Tuesday night, he was heartened when he saw his brother's blue pickup heading the wrong way on Sixth Avenue.
"I was so happy I ran into the street and said, ‘Greg! Greg!' But it wasn't him. It was someone else from the firehouse driving," he recalled.
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