Dust blinded NYPD Sgt. Gerard Kane and choked off his air as he wandered weak and disoriented near the World Trade Center after the first tower collapsed Sept. 11.

"Like many, I was sure I was going to die," he said. An aide to then-NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, Kane had been sent to find New York FBI ( news - web sites) head Barry Mawn, who was OK. Kane was near Church Street when the tower fell. Suddenly, he felt a hand on his arm and a voice say, "You can't be out here. Just come with me.

" The helping hand belonged to Jonathan Stewart, a then 17-year-old high school senior who had gone to the area "to help." He had left his safe refuge at nearby St. Peter's Church to rescue a stranger. "He ran into danger rather than running away," said Christine Dooley, assistant principal of the Lower Manhattan Outreach Center, who nominated the "fantastic" teen for The Post's Courage Medal. 

That morning, Stewart was on his way to the alternative high school on West Houston Street, about 13 blocks north of the Twin Towers, when he heard that two planes had crashed into the towers. The teen, who last summer took the FDNY Emergency Medical Technician program, kept walking downtown. He said he ran into the church at Barclay and Church Streets after the first tower came down. "We could see [Kane] from the inside," he recalled. Someone said. "Someone has to go get him."

 


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