She was on my team at Netcentives in 1999, and then left to learn photography and ultimately to become a flight attendant based in Boston for United Airlines. She was on United Airlines flight 175 when it crashed into the World Trade Center at 9:03 am EST / 6:03 am PST (full timeline of events on Wikipedia).

Every year I try to drop a quick note on her guestbook at her tribute site, SweetAlicia.org. I also posted about her on the then Kango (now UpTake) blog here.  Pat Jenkins at UpTake also posted on September 11 Memorials around the country.

Here’s a few pictures of Alicia from SweetAlicia.org:

While Alicia was Netcentives and worked on my team, it wasn’t until after she died that I realized that there was a lot I didn’t know about her. The crazy dot-com bubble days, where I felt like Keanu Reeves in Speed trying to keep the bus from exploding, wasn’t conducive to really spending time with people and building deeper relationships. Anyway, on 9/11 I often read her tribute site and other tribute pages like this one on BrokenHeartTrading.com and on Sep11Memories.org.

During this past year, I found an old waterproof film camera that I had failed to develop over the years. I developed it and found pictures of Alicia and my other team members on one of my most memorable offsites. I uploaded a those old Netcentives Offsite Photos from 1999 onto Flickr.

In the photo below, Alicia is 3rd from the right:

In the photo below, Alicia is 5th from the left:

In this photo below, Alicia is #2 from the left:

You come into contact with so many people in your life.  Seasons come and go.  There are so many people in this picture that I care about and consider friends, and yet we’ve lost touch.  Paul Erlicht, Deann Fairfield Work, Bethany Selland, Jonathan Blatt, Ashwin Verma, Tom Harvey, Lisa Cross.  And that’s just the people that decided to go surfing at that offsite.  It was a blessing to work with so many amazing people during that season of my life.

9/11 and Alicia reminds me to make an effort to go one level deeper in getting to know people, beyond the normal course of business.   I wish I had done so with Alicia.

Remembering her on this day.