Tatiana Ryjova

Tatiana Ryjova was thinking about changing jobs, but working in the meantime as a meeting coordinator for Regus Business Centres at the World Trade Center was still worth the long commute into the city.

Though Ryjova had been with the company for the past year, her friend Deborah Monroe said Ryjova wanted to work closer to home to spend more time with her husband, Vasily, and their two young sons.

"She told me she didn't want to go into the city," Monroe said. It was a two-hour commute from the Ryjovas' home in Somers, N.Y., and she had been asking about jobs in Connecticut, where Monroe and Ryjova had worked together in the past.

Ryjova came to the United States in the early 1990s as a tour guide for a Russian vacation company. She held a master's degree in education from a Russian university and had a penchant for languages. She persuaded her husband--who was still living in Russia at the time--to move to the states and settle permanently in New York.

More or less.

Together, they bought houses in the New York suburbs, fixed them up and sold them, a process they repeated a number of times in recent years, Monroe said.

At the same time, Tatiana Ryjova had worked in the training and development office of a Medicaid group, at a computer training and professional development organization and, most recently, at Regus.

Along the way, she collected friends like stamps, Monroe said. Other Russian emigrants were instant friends, of course, but so were fellow churchgoers, coworkers and clients from every place she had worked. Ryjova went beyond compassion, said Monroe. "She'd take your side. She'd get all mad and angry at people for you."

When laid off from a Connecticut company a year ago, Ryjova was quickly hired by Regus as the company opened its offices on the 93rd floor of the trade center's south tower.