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His City Ever Since

Rick Blood grew up in Williamsburg, Va., but his heart always belonged to New York City. As a teenager, he hung subway maps on his bedroom wall and played a New York version of Monopoly.

For his 13th birthday, he asked his parents for a trip to the city. He liked it so much that he spent his next three birthdays here. "He always loved subways and trains," said his father, Richard Blood. "He just thought that this would be the place to be."

At 36, Rick Blood had made a place for himself in one of the city's landmarks as an insurance broker at the Aon Corporation. He and his wife, Kris, were raising two children, Michael and Madeline, in Ridgefield, N.J. But every workday, he would eagerly head into the city again. Not even the crowds, the noise and the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 could scare him away.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on September 24, 2001.