Vanessa Roach was getting ready to go to work at Stanford University. Yonkel Goldstein was at a meeting in New York City, across from the World Trade Center. Samina Sundas was shopping in Costco. Chet Frankenfield was vacationing in Canada.

These four Palo Alto area residents, along with nearly two dozen others, recently recalled the moments they heard about -- or witnessed -- the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, as well as their feelings and experiences of that day.

The Palo Alto Weekly is sharing their first-person stories, posted below, as our community reflects upon the tragic events of that day and how our lives and thinking have changed as a result.

To read residents' recollections, click on their names below.

Also, several of their stories have been captured in a video.

In New York City

• Yonkel Goldstein: At Ground Zero

• Kimberley Stewart: A Miracle amid Tragedy

Along the Midpeninsula

• Vanessa Roach: Two Haunting Words

• Theresa Carey: Saved by Volleyball

• Tracy Douglas: The Mattress Dilemma

• Samina Sundas: A Voice for Peace

• Tina McMinn: Far from Home

• Megan Hulce: Who Could Believe ... ?

• Carina Rossner: Birth Amid Chaos

• Mohinder Pelia: A Visitor Stands in Solidarity

• Kathleen Hughes: Almost Losing the Love of Her Life

• Mark Meyers: There for Our Country

Adrift in the U.S.A.

• Richard Placone: Voyage of a Lifetime

• Art Kraemer: 'Stuck' on Maui

• Mark VanZanten: A Forced Landing

• Paul Werner: On a Boston Bus

• Miriam Palm: Return from Montana

A World Away

• Chet Frankenfield: Our Canadian Neighbors

• Anne Ream: Talismans in Milan

• Jeanne Kennedy: The Hospitality of Strangers

• Mimm Patterson: Homesick, in Ireland

• Alice Smith: A View from the U.K.

• Romeo Horvath: Deployed in Kosovo

• Bill Barranco: Whose News?

• Joy Robinson: Sympathy in Tibet

Poetic Reflections

• M. A. Fruth: Gap Teeth

• Carolyn Dole: Silent Skies