NEW YORK _ In the last hours of his life, Sept. 11 first responder Detective Luis Alvarez was still fighting for his colleagues poisoned in the toxic remains of the World Trade Center.
"He was agitated," his sister Aida Lugo recalled in her Wednesday eulogy at Alvarez's Queens funeral. "He told me he had been walking, and walking, and walking. ... The nurse asked him where he was walking, and my brother responded, 'I was walking to find the first responders to make sure they got help.'
"How we walk with the broken speaks louder than how we sit with the greatest."
The 53-year-old Alvarez was honored at a jam-packed funeral Mass in Astoria where he was remembered for both his heroic efforts at ground zero and before Congress _ the latter just weeks before his death from 9/11-related cancer last Saturday.
Former talk show host Jon Stewart, who sat alongside Alvarez when the NYPD detective testified in Washington last month, began crying as the funeral hearse arrived at the Immaculate Conception Church accompanied by police vehicles and the mournful sound of bagpipes.
When the service ended, the detective's wife clutched the flag from his casket to her chest as Alvarez's oldest son, David, stood by her side. Alvarez spent three months at ground zero, and he became the 222nd NYPD member killed by their time working in the lethal rubble.
David, in his touching eulogy, offered a proud recollection of his father.
"I love him like nothing else, and I knew he loved me just the same," said David. "I laugh like him, smile like him, I'm quiet and stubborn like him.
"Before he became an American hero, he was mine."
A frail and emaciated Alvarez appeared before Congress on June 11 to call for the passage of permanent legislation to compensate the public servants who put their lives on the line in the toxic remains of the Twin Towers.
Stewart accompanied Alvarez as the former cop spoke directly to the legislators about the need for a commitment to the heroes of ground zero.
"You made me come down here," Alvarez told the House Judiciary Committee. "I'm going to make sure that you never forget to take care of the 9/11 responders."
He was slated for his 69th chemotherapy treatment the next day, and he was dead before the end of June.
New York Police Commissioner James O'Neill praised Alvarez's service in the U.S. Marine Corps before he spent 21 years with the NYPD. And he then hailed the unending effort by Alvarez to make sure Congress took care of the people who gave everything on 9/11.
"All Lou wanted in return was to have his government recognize the labor and pain of his brothers and sisters," O'Neill said. "It's the right thing to do. These heroes responded to calls for help. They did not hesitate."
Legislation to permanently extend the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation fund is expected to pass the House this month.
Retired NYPD officer Joe Marino Jr., 60, stood outside the church to honor a hero who was a complete stranger.
"What makes this more special is he fought every single day to make sure the money was continuing to the families of police, firefighters, iron workers who need it," Marino said. "He's a true hero and everybody should pray for him."
His sister, near the end of her remembrance, recounted what one of Alvarez's former NYPD partners said of her brother.
"He told me, 'Louie was the quietest man I ever worked with, but in the end he made the most noise,'" she said.
