Twenty-one years with the Census Bureau, which began because of her knack for getting strangers talking. As an enumerator she had found families in need and gone back after hours with food and clothing for them. She was flying to a conference with her colleague Waleska Martinez. She telephoned an old friend and told him, in tears, that it felt as though the aircraft was turning.

Killed aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which came down in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the morning of 11 September 2001. The aircraft had left Newark forty-two minutes late, which is the only reason those aboard learned by telephone what had already happened in New York before theirs was taken. They had about thirty minutes. They voted, and they went forward at the cockpit door. The aircraft never reached what it was aimed at.