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By LESLIE EATON
New York Times
June 6, 2004

Deborah Mardenfeld had the sad distinction of being one of the most gravely injured New Yorkers to survive the attacks of 9/11. Hit by falling debris from the second plane that slammed into the World Trade Center, she spent more than a year in hospitals, trying to regain the use of her badly damaged legs.

Now, Ms. Mardenfeld has been awarded roughly $8.6 million by the federal September 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which says it is among the largest of the 4,127 payments it has agreed to make so far(they total more than $5 billion). The award was first reported yesterday in The New York Law Journal.

Ms. Mardenfeld, who has just turned 33, has not yet received the money. And she said yesterday that she was not sure what significance the amount had, except perhaps that she was one of the youngest survivors; the awards take into account lost future earnings.

"You can't compare suffering," she said.

Guy I. Smiley, the lawyer who represented Ms. Mardenfeld without charge as part of the Trial Lawyers Care program, said he was pleased with the size of the award. "But it's hard money for her," he said. "She'd give it all back in a flash."

Ms. Mardenfeld and her fiancé, Gregory St. John, said they did not have firm plans on what to do with the money, except perhaps to buy a house and invest for the future. "What the money does is provide opportunities for the future for myself and my family and hopefully my future family to be," said Ms. Mardenfeld, who is looking forward to having children one day.

In the meantime, she is spending as many as six days a week in rehabilitation, recovering not just from her original injuries, but also from subsequent operations (four so far this year). "I've learned to walk I can't tell you how many times," she said.

There have been setbacks; she has been stuck in a wheelchair for months waiting for a special shoe she needs to walk, she said. But she is now well enough to resume classes in jewelry making, which was her hobby before she was injured.

Though she is proud of the success she had achieved at American Express - she was on her way to work at the World Financial Center on Sept. 11- she said it is hard to imagine what her path will be in the future, except that she wants to do some charitable work. Right now, "her full-time job is to get better, as soon as possible," Mr. St. John said.

She is also fighting to be sure that her injuries do not define her. "The most important thing for me is to be loved for who I am, and not because I survived," she said.

That said, she does think her experience has something to teach others. "The thing I've learned, and that I hope people learn from me, is never take no for an answer," she said. "Always hope."