Everyone remembers the poignant pictures of First Responders and Contractors and their “bucket brigades,” sifting through the rubble of the Twin Towers to find anything they could of the remains of the fallen. They worked day and night for months after the attack, in the smoke and dust blowing up from the ruins. What they didn’t know then was that dust was filled with toxic materials and carcinogens. They didn’t find out until an unusually high number of their brothers and sisters started coming down with serious respiratory illnesses and rare cancers. Michael O’Connell is one of those First Responders. He was a 25-year old probationary firefighter on 9/11. He worked on “the pile” for weeks. Years later, he was diagnosed with Sarcoidosis, a relatively rare disease that forms a kind of wall around his lungs which leaves him breathless, often unable to function. Lila Nordstrom’s story is one that hasn’t been talked about all that much. She was one of 3,000 Stuyvesant High School students who were in class when the attacks happened, just blocks from the site. Though they were evacuated, in an attempt to show the world that Lower Manhattan was open for business and life, they were sent back to class a month later, to classrooms filled with the same toxic dust emanating from the wreckage of the Trade Center. Now, she and many of her classmates have seen their health deteriorate. Some have died, again, of the same cancers seen in First Responders. They join Cheryl to talk about why the authorization of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund is so important to those who have been diagnosed with potentially deadly illnesses, and those, like the students, who will be diagnosed in the future, or may not know they are sick just because of the time they spent Downtown in the aftermath of 9/11.