When terrorists toppled the World Trade Center six years ago, an untold number of New Yorkers - even those not directly touched by the attacks - took stock of their lives and decided to take a different path.

Many switched careers, opting to leave behind cushy offices and fat paychecks for new callings, ones that emphasized service and selflessness.

A stockbroker became a paramedic. A mechanic became a police officer. A corporate manager became a teacher.

Here are the stories of five of these people who changed not just their jobs, but their purpose in life:

She becomes nurse because 'I owed it to people that died'

As smoke filled the hallway of the 20th floor of the World Trade Center's Tower 1, Lakeesha Ridgeway-Sainsbury called her family to say she would not be coming home.

"I was screaming. I told them that I thought I was going to die," said Ridgeway-Sainsbury. "My grandmother told me to pray."

Ridgeway-Sainsbury, now 29, was working as a customer service representative for Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield when the planes slammed into the twin towers six years ago.

"We finally found the stairwells and as we were going down, we saw firefighters coming up those stairs," she said.

"One fireman, in particular, he was so sweet, he was so helpful," said Ridgeway-Sainsbury. "He led us out, and then he went back in.

"I'm sure he didn't make it out."

Laid off in the months after the attack, Ridgeway-Sainsbury moved from job to job before she finally found a new calling and went back to school to train to be a nurse.

"I felt like I should be doing something more," said Ridgeway-Sainsbury, a mother of four. "I owed it to the people that died and to those firemen. That's how I felt."

She first worked at a women's health center in Brooklyn before landing a job helping former drug addicts at a substance abuse rehabilitation facility in Queens. "I love it," she said. "I feel like I am finally making a difference."

Disaster gives him 'moment of clarity'

Daniel Fitzpatrick, now 39, wanted to walk away from a high-paying Wall Street job in the months before Sept. 11, but was uncertain which direction his life would take.

"It was very cutthroat. It wasn't my cup of tea," said Fitzpatrick, who was doing corporate trust administration for the Bank of New York. "The money was very good, but the hours were long and it provided no personal satisfaction.

"I never felt like I accomplished anything but I was afraid to leave the security of the high-paying job," he said.

In the hours after the World Trade Center fell, Fitzgerald knew what he had to do.

"Sept. 11 was it for me. There was no turning back," Fitzpatrick said.

"It was the ultimate moment of clarity."

Drawn to the FDNY but too old to be a firefighter, Fitzpatrick signed up for emergency medical technician school in October 2001 and was certified within months.

He worked for a private ambulance company for three years before switching to the FDNY in January 2005. He is stationed in a busy area of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, not far from Woodhull Hospital.

"This career means everything," he said. "If it's a bad day, it's the worst you could have. But if it's a good day, it's the best you could possibly imagine. "It's still an adjustment to get used to the money but that doesn't matter," Fitzpatrick said. "I'm doing some things that I know other people couldn't do."

"It's difficult, but you do it because you love it."

Realizes she could do more on Earth – as a teacher

Damali Alexander felt the floor move beneath her, looked out the window and realized that the north tower of the World Trade Center was swaying.

" 'Okay,' I said to myself, 'The building's not supposed to move like this,' " said Alexander, who was working on the 20th floor as a receptionist at an insurance company. "I grabbed my things and got out of there before anyone could tell me otherwise."

Gaping at the burning holes in both skyscrapers, Alexander ran to the Staten Island ferry to escape across New York Harbor, even though she didn't know a soul in the outer borough.

"I just had to get out of Manhattan and I didn't care how," she said.

Alexander was laid off from her job within months of the terror attacks and worked in advertising for two years before realizing she was still unfulfilled.

"Corporate America wasn't for me," she said. "Sept. 11 made me realize how little time we all have on this Earth, and I needed to do more with mine."

Alexander, now 26, enrolled in the NYC Teaching Fellows Program and was assigned to a Brooklyn school for special-needs teenagers.

"I love it. I love the students," said Alexander, the school's librarian and technology teacher. "I feel like I am making so much more of a contribution." "They add something to my life, but it's more than that," she said. "I feel needed, I feel necessary. "And I've never felt that way before."

He sees jetliner heading at him, screams, 'Lord, you take over'

Stanley Praimnath was on the phone with a colleague in Chicago when he gazed out his window toward the Statue of Liberty and saw United Airlines flight 175 bearing down.

"It was a huge, monstrous plane, and it looked like it was at my eye level," said Praimnath, a loan officer who worked in Fuji Bank's office on the 81st floor of the south tower.

"I screamed 'Lord, you take over,' and dove under my desk," Praimnath said.

The plane roared into the building, effortlessly slicing through the tower's skin and causing the ceiling and walls around Praimnath to collapse.

Injured and disoriented, Praimnath prayed for help. When the dust and smoke briefly parted, he saw a flashlight being waved by the floor's fire warden. Praimnath crawled to the light, a nail protruding from his hand, and climbed over a damaged wall to reach the warden, Brian Clark.

"We had never met before but we walked down the stairs like brothers," said Praimnath, who said 18 of his colleagues died that day. "I then ran to nearby Trinity Church to thank God."

Praimnath, now a deacon and men's leader at the Bethel Assembly of God in Ozone Park, Queens, started touring the country as a motivational speaker, addressing church and college groups.

"I became a speaker because I believe God asked me to do my part," said Praimnath, now 50 with two teenage daughters. "I stopped taking every day for granted. Never again."

Cop brother's WTC death spurs him to join NYPD

As teenagers, Arthur Leahy and his older brother James wanted to dedicate their lives to public service after their father, a Parks Department employee, was murdered on the job in 1975.

James joined the NYPD in 1992, but Arthur fell in love with cars in high school and became a mechanic, eventually managing a Meineke shop on Staten Island.

"I was happy with what I did," said Arthur Leahy (left), now 39. "I worked with people and I enjoyed earning their trust."

James Leahy, a father of three young boys, ran into one of the burning World Trade Center towers the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

His body was found Feb. 5, 2002. Three days earlier, Arthur Leahy had taken the NYPD exam.

"This made me evaluate where I was and what I wanted," said Arthur Leahy. "At first, my family wasn't too excited about my decision, but when I got sworn in, I knew how proud they were."

He graduated from the Police Academy in June 2006 and was assigned to the 6th Precinct - his brother's former stationhouse.

"I couldn't be any prouder than when I walk through those doors every day and go to roll call," said Leahy, one of four cops who fatally shot the gunman who killed two auxiliary officers on Bleecker St. in March.

"I hope I'm making my brother proud, too."

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