NYC's medical examiner Hirsch is a low-profile man in a high-profile job since 9/11

As firefighters and police swarmed the World Trade Center the morning of Sept. 11, the city's chief medical examiner was right there with them, setting up a makeshift morgue for a casualty toll he knew would be massive.

Beginning that morning, Hirsch's office undertook an unprecedented project to identify the dead. That mission is still ongoing, with slightly over half the victims having been identified.

But Recently, Hirsch has found himself in a new phase related to Sept. 11: As people who were exposed to ground zero dust get sick and die, their families are seeking to have the deaths classified as being caused by the trade center tragedy.

In a ruling that stunned sick workers and their advocates, Hirsch declared this week that the 2006 death of James Zadroga, a 34-year-old retired police detective, had nothing to do with the air he breathed in during hundreds of hours spent amid the toxic, burning trade center rubble.

Hirsch offered other reasons for Zadroga's death in a private meeting with Zadroga's relatives Friday, but "the family disagrees with it. I disagree with it," attorney Michael Barasch said.

Hirsch has not commented publicly, which is consistent with his approach throughout his nearly 20-year tenure at the agency. As the head of one of the busiest morgues in the country, Hirsch has always shunned the spotlight.

"He's a very private man — you never knew what was going on inside of him, but outwardly he was always calm," said Robert Shaler, a forensic biologist who worked for Hirsch for 15 years.

Shaler oversaw the trade center identification project from 2001 to 2005, which has been a sort of personal mission for Hirsch. More than 20,000 pieces of human remains were collected from the site. Many are still unmatched to victims, but Hirsch assured their families in a letter last year that "We will never quit."

The medical examiner's office was in turmoil when Hirsch took it over in 1989, hired by then-Mayor Ed Koch.

Coming from the medical examiner's office in Suffolk County on Long Island, Hirsch inherited an agency that was struggling with slow response times to crime scenes, long backlogs in completing autopsy reports, perceptions that it was susceptible to outside politics and general chaos.

"It was in total disarray," Koch said in an interview. "The place couldn't pass a health inspection if there was one held — you'd slip on the blood!"

Koch said Hirsch turned the place around because he is brilliant both in forensics as well as managing people.

Friends and associates describe Hirsch as smart, deliberate, witty, a great storyteller and not one to second-guess his decisions.

When novelist Patricia Cornwell reached out to him for consultation on grisly crime scene details, he agreed to advise her, but not because he wanted any sort of attention or credit (and he insisted that he would not be mentioned).

He helped, as one friend put it, "so people would know the truth and wouldn't get misconceptions about forensic science."

Hirsch also brought unique touches to the medical examiner headquarters. He has kept bonsai trees in his office, sometimes smoked a pipe there, and his taste for suspenders was said to inspire a mini-fad among some staffers who copied him, Shaler said.

A friend who often ran into him at the coffee cart at the start of the work day said Hirsch bid farewell one morning by saying, "Time to go see what God and the devil left on my doorstep last night."