RUNNING LATE SAVED THEM FROM TRADE CENTER DEATH

BY TRACY CONNOR DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Sunday, September 08, 2002

Cantor Fitzgerald executive Ari Schonbrun got an early start Sept. 11. It was a good thing, too. With the Jewish holidays coming up, he had a lot of work to cram into a compressed schedule.

So there was a lilt in his voice as he swung open the door of his Cedarhurst, L.I., home, stepped out and yelled to his wife, Joyce, "I'm leaving!"

And there was a note of aggravation when she hollered back: "Did you do Baruch's book order? You're not leaving until you do the book order."

Baruch is the couple's 8-year-old son. Schonbrun had promised to help the boy choose a few books from a catalogue handed out by his yeshiva.

The deadline for the order was that morning, so he turned around, put down his coffee and settled in for 20 minutes of haggling.

He didn't know it then, but as he walked back into his house, Ari Schonbrun - Orthodox Jew, 45 years old, father of four - had crossed the threshold between life and death.

Like so many others that day, Schonbrun's life was saved - and forever changed - by a snap decision, a mundane event that was meaningless in the moment, miraculous in hindsight.

There was the lawyer who went back home to get her gym bag, the businessman who stopped for a pack of cigarettes, the systems architect who went to synagogue to pray.

All of them owe their survival to a quirk of fate that kept them away from the twin towers on Sept. 11.

Missed the train

In Schonbrun's case, the book order made him miss his train. So it was after 8:40 a.m. when he got to Tower 1, hopped an elevator to the 78th floor and headed to another bank for the ride to Cantor's 101st-floor offices.

As he crossed over, American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the skyscraper. Above him, 658 of his colleagues were trapped, but Schonbrun and a burned co-worker managed to walk down 78 flights to safety.

It wasn't until later that he realized that if he hadn't stopped to help his son, if he had gotten to work 10 minutes earlier, he would have been No. 659.

"I'm a firm believer in God, and I think that it wasn't my time," he said last week as the anniversary approached. "But I will tell you, I walk out of my house and say goodbye to my wife and kids, and the thought always goes through my mind that this might be the last time I see them."

A second chance is a precious commodity, and Schonbrun intends to make the most of it. His "new perspective" means that work - he's chief operating officer of a Cantor division - now takes a backseat to family.

Swirl of emotions

If the kids have a special event, he's there, deadlines be damned. When his father had a stroke a month ago, Schonbrun put aside his reports and flew to Israel for a week and a half.

But the swirl of emotions that comes from having survived a cataclysm that claimed so many bubbles to the surface.

"People ask me, do I feel guilty?" he said.

"I'm human, and there have been times - with all the money flying around, and the millions going to the [victims'] families - that I've thought, 'I should have gone down with the building.'

"Especially when my wife and I are fighting about money. I think, if I died, she wouldn't have a care in the world right now. When I voiced that once, my kids looked at me like I was absolutely crazy."