From Police Heroes, a book by author Chuck Whitlock:

Officer Antonio Rodrigues, thirty-five, was in the basement of the World Trade Center picking up oxygen tanks before the towers collapsed on September 11th. He was working at the Port Authority Bus Terminal near Times Square and was with fourteen other officers who commandeered a commuter bus to get to the World Trade Center.

Rodrigues grew up in a coastal town in Portugal. At the age of eleven or twelve – before he emigrated with his family to the United States – he had several exhibits of the landscapes he painted. He was trained as an aeronautical engineer but became a police officer because he liked working with people. Before he became a Port Authority police officer, he was a transit worker with the NYPD.

As his memorial service, Deputy Mayor Anthony Coles said that Rodrigues “met the worst of humanity with the best of what America had to offer.” Rodrigues leaves behind his wife, Cristina, and their two children, Sara and Adam.

Portraits of Grief, The New York Times

“Where is Your Rock?”

Antonio Rodrigues painted what he liked and he liked the water, so he painted scenes of the beach and of boats. He grew up in Portugal, in a town perched on the coast. When he married and settled near New York, he and his wife, Cristina, chose Port Washington, on Long Island, because they wanted to be near the balm of the water. Their two children, Sara and Adam, had no complaints.

Mr. Rodrigues, 35, had been a transit officer in New York but joined the Port Authority police force in 2001. He designed a T-shirt for his graduating class, with a logo on one side and caricatures of graduates on the back.

He had been stationed at the Port Authority bus terminal, and when the attack occurred, he and 14 other officers commandeered one of the regular commuter buses and raced down to the trade center. Much as he relished painting, Mr. Rodrigues had not done many canvases in a few years. Instead, he drew cartoons about his job.

“He found a lot of things funny with his job,” Mrs. Rodrigues said. For instance, she said, one of the other officers at the academy was assigned to carry around a rock and take care of it. It became a running joke to inquire of this officer, “Where is your rock?”

So Mr. Rodrigues drew a cartoon about the officer and the rock. In sorting through the cartoons, Mrs. Rodrigues has decided to give some of them away to officers she feels would appreciate them. The officer with the rock is getting his.