Mohammad Salman Hamdani

Salman Hamdani was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and moved to America with his parents when he was 13 months old. He had two younger brothers, Adnaan and Zeshan, who were born in the US. His mother, Talat, taught English at a Queens middle school and his father, Saleem, was the owner and operator of a convenience store in Brooklyn until his death on June 26, 2004. The family lived in Bayside, where Hamdani was on the football team at Bayside High School. He majored in biochemistry at Queens College while working part-time as an emergency medical technician (EMT). He studied abroad in London his junior year before graduating in June 2001. He was determined to get into medical school, but if he was not accepted he wanted to become a detective and apply his scientific knowledge toward forensics. He joined the New York Police Department's (NYPD) cadet program in addition to working at Rockefeller University. The night before September 11, he was working on an application for medical school and helping his father cope with heart disease. ==September 11 and aftermath==

It was believed that on the morning of September 11, 2001, while on the way to work at Rockefeller University, Hamdani witnessed the smoke coming from the Twin Towers and hurried to the scene to aid victims, using his police and EMT identification to get a ride through the restricted traffic. Hamdani was reported as missing; his family feared he had gone to the World Trade Center in an attempt to help as an EMT, but held out hope he was being secretly held by the government because of his religion. His mother wrote to President George W. Bush to plead for his help. In the weeks following the attack, investigators from the FBI and NYPD began questioning the family about Hamdani. His mother said US Representative Gary Ackerman, whose congressional district included Queens, was among the officials who came to the family's Bayside home to ask questions about her son, including what his motives were for becoming a police cadet, which Internet chat rooms he visited and why he had been in London. According to the family, CIA officials came to help find their missing son. They confiscated a college graduation photo of Hamdani posing with a student from Afghanistan. In October 2001, remains of a body, along with Hamdani's medical bag and identification, were found in the wreckage of the North Tower at Ground Zero. He was cited in the USA PATRIOT Act, signed into law on October 26, 2001, in Title 1, section 102: Hamdani's remains were positively identified through a DNA match in March 2002. ==Legacy==

's South Pool. On April 5, 2002, shortly after his remains were identified, Hamdani was hailed as a hero by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Rep. Ackerman at a police funeral attended by 500 people at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. Bloomberg called him "an example of how one can make the world better." In 2002, Rockefeller University established a memorial scholarship fund in Hamdani's name for outstanding Pakistani-American students. Also in 2014, Hamdani won the Unity Productions Foundation's "Noor Inayat Khan Courage Award." In 2023, a documentary about Hamdani entitled American Jedi: The Salman Hamdani Story was released by Alexander Street. ==Memorial controversy==

At the National September 11 Memorial, Hamdani is memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-66. Despite the fact that he was found under the rubble of the North Tower, his name is not included at the North Pool among the other North Tower victims. The New York Times noted that his name is on the final panel at the memorial, "with the names of others who did not fit into the rubrics the memorial created to give placements meaning. That section is for those who had only a loose connection, or none, to the World Trade Center." "[On his way to work on Sept. 11] he must have seen the flames at the World Trade Center from the elevated train, then rushed downtown to try to help. He did not make that decision and take that fatal detour as a lab analyst, but as the first responder he was trained to be," Talat said. In a January 2012 article, Hamdani's mother Talat stated that she planned to continue to lobby for Hamdani to be recognized as a first responder. ==Notes==