Joseph Navas, forty-four, enjoyed his high-risk, four-days on, two-days off job with the Port Authority. A twenty-year veteran officer, he had been with the Port Authority’s ESU for seven years. He trained for specialized jobs in rescue diving, confined space rappelling, and chemical and biological counterterrorism. He worked out of the Journal Square PATH Station in New Jersey.
Port Authority Officer Eric Bulger said he watched Navas lead other ESU officers into the North Tower: “It was like the Marines coming to the rescue,” he told Newsday. Navas’s last transmission was from the basement.
Karen, his wife of fifteen years, said he was a true family man. He enjoyed playing with his three children, Jessica, Joseph and Justin. He coached Joseph’s Little League team as well as an ice hockey team. When he was off during the week, he drove the kids to school and sometimes had lunch with them.
Navas, the son of a retired maintenance supervisor for the Port Authority, seldom talked about his job. It was through the newspaper that his family learned about his involvement in a May 1999 incident in which he was part of an operation to prevent a man from jumping off a George Washington Bridge support tower. Navas dangled out of a door and was able to grab the man after he leaped onto another rescuer standing on a ledge below. At the time, Navas said, “You want to save people, but you also want to get home to your family.”
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