A former janitor at the Goldman Sachs building who helped the company batten down the hatches during Hurricane Sandy claims a drunken supervisor tossed him out the lower Manhattan headquarters — and into the aftermath of the storm.
That, Mefit “Mike” Zecevic claims, was the start of a terrifying odyssey through the darkness and floodwaters back home to storm-shattered Staten Island — an ordeal that left him shivering for days and unable to function for weeks.
Zecevic says Goldman Sachs’ janitorial firm, ABM Industries, then fired him for allegedly stealing $100 from the discarded shirt of a co-worker who now has his job — a charge he denies.
Now Zecevic, 42, is suing ABM for $10 million and fighting to get his job back.
“They destroyed my life, what they did to me,” Zecevic told The Daily News on Friday. “I worked day and night. They destroyed my life for nothing. Nothing.”
Speaking at his lawyer’s office, the lingering effects on Zecevic were evident as tears welled up in his eyes. At one point he was so overcome with emotion he threw up in a garbage can.
An immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, Zecevic said he worked happily in the building for 12 years cleaning up after Goldman Sachs traders. He earned $60,000-a-year at his union job and made a lot of overtime.
Zecevic said he and several co-workers rode out the storm in the building at 200 West St., working without sleep to keep the floodwaters out.
The trouble began, Zecevic said, of the morning of Oct. 30 — a little over a day after Sandy swamped the city.
Zecevic said he clearing away debris on the ground floor when his boss Eric Holt told him to head up to the seventh floor traders’ lounge where the janitors had bunked through the storm. He told him to retrieve a co-worker’s shirt from a locker reserved for Goldman Sachs workers.
“Holt had a distinct odor of alcohol on his breath,” Zecevic’s court papers state.
“I removed the shirt and left it in the maintenance cart,” Zecevic told The News. “Then I continued to do my job.”
That night, as Zecevic was removing sandbags, Holt returned.
“I know he was drunk,” Zecevic said. “He said, ‘I was looking for you. Leave the building.’ I asked what is the reason. He wouldn’t say.”
Zecevic said he pleaded with Holt to let him stay.
“I said, ‘I live in Staten Island, there’s a state of emergency, there are no cars, no trains, no lights,” he said. “The water is up up to our necks. I was begging for my life. But he said ‘Leave the building’.”
Holt wouldn’t even let him squat in the lobby until the next morning, he said.
Zecevic said he went to the loading dock to speak with Holt’s supervisors and could see water was still over the rooftops of the cars parked on Murray Street.
But Holt’s bosses, Michael Copperstone and Matthew Gall, refused to help, he said. And when a city cop tried to intercede on Zecevic’s behalf, he too was rebuffed, the papers state.
“I walked crying,” Zecevic admitted. “I was exhausted already” from storm duty.
And so began Zecevic’s trek, first through the flooded downtown streets to City Hall and then over the Brooklyn Bridge.
“It was dark and cold,” he said. “I could see the red emergency lights on the bridge. There was nobody around. I was scared.”
When he got to the middle of bridge, Zecevic said he considered killing himself.
“What did I have to live for?” he said, his eyes reddening. “God stopped me. I said to myself, ‘Let’s go. Let’s walk.’ I walked all night in Brooklyn, walking, walking, walking.”
Zecevic said that as he trudged he was tormented by thoughts of drowning “or if I’d step on an electric wire and die.” Some of the water he waded through had a powerful stench and he feared he might be poisoned.
“I was praying for my life,” he said.
The sun was rising over New York Harbor by the time Zecevic reached the Belt Parkway and it took several more hours of walking to reach the entrance to the Verrazano Bridge, where police officers drove him to the Staten Island side.
From there, Zecevic said, he made his way through the hard-hit New Dorp section to his apartment.
“It took me 15 hours,” he said. “I was so exhausted all I could do was take off my sneakers. I was so weak I couldn’t take off my clothes to get into the shower.”
To this day, he said, “I still have nightmares dreaming that I’d step on an electric wire or drown.”
A month after the storm, Zecevic got a letter from AMB Industries saying he was fired for stealing “tenant property.”
Zecevic’s lawyer, William Perniciaro, said what ABM Industries did to his client was a new low.
“I’ve done this work a long time and I thought I had seen everything,” he said. “I have never seen an employer knowingly jeopardize some one’s life.”
In a statement, ABM called Zecevic’s “inaccurate and misleading, including but not limited to his descriptions of the circumstances surrounding his termination for theft and his departure.”
Zecevic, however, had praise for Goldman Sachs — a financial giant that has been vilified for its role in the recession.
“Goldman Sachs is not to blame, they have been very supportive of Zecevic’s case,” said Perniciaro.
