They were understandably cowed that first night in New York City in October. They fretted in their hotel room, worried that maxing out their credit cards and raiding their savings on a quixotic quest to interview female rescue workers at ground zero might end in failure.

"What if," Mary Carouba remembers asking her friend Susan Hagen through tears, "there really are no women?"

But Carouba, a 45-year-old social worker from Santa Rosa, and her writing partner, Hagen, a 46-year-old firefighter in the small Sonoma County town of Graton, are not easily dissuaded.

Carouba went in, cold, to a restaurant near a police precinct's headquarters, close to the former World Trade Center. She stood at the head of the dining room, mustered her courage, and called out, "Any female cops here who were at ground zero?"

Awkward silence.

"Very frightening," Carouba recalls. "But then, after I took my total stab in the dark, three women came forward. It started from there. And we kept getting more and more names."

After three months and several cross-country flights from the Bay Area to New York, Hagen and Carouba saw their dream of writing a book about female heroes at the World Trade Center become a reality. They found, interviewed and photographed 30 firefighters, police officers and emergency medical technicians, and they featured three others who had died trying to rescue others.

The result is "Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage and Compassion," published last month by Alpha Books.

EPIPHANY ON THE COUCH

What started as merely the rantings of two media junkies watching the evening news -- upset because President Bush and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani resurrected phrases from the gender-stereotype graveyard and spoke of the "brotherhood" of firemen and policemen -- turned into a consuming project.

In the time that it had taken Carouba to rouse herself off the couch, her calico cat screeching behind her, and scream at the TV set, they had what Hagen calls their epiphany. They had to let the world know that one sex does not have a monopoly on heroism.

The two Californians, who had no book contract and few contacts, said they were surprised that the female rescue workers they eventually found were so willing to open up. Because Hagen, 46, is a firefighter in Graton and Carouba, 45, is a social worker for the Sonoma County Health Department, they felt a kinship with the workers.

"We became sort of a de facto critical stress debriefing team for the women rescue workers," Hagen said. "For many of the women, this was the only time they've broken down before or since the terrorist attacks. We weren't expecting that."

Janice Olszewski, a captain with the New York Fire Department and one of the women interviewed for the book, said she wasn't surprised that female workers were marginalized by the media and politicians after Sept. 11. Of the 410 rescue workers reported dead or missing at the Trade Center site on Sept. 11, only 3 were women.

"Many rescue workers that day were women, but everyone made it seem like only men were there," Olszewski, 40, said. "Maybe people couldn't believe women were in there pulling out bodies because it was so dangerous, dramatically dirty and physical. People just didn't think.

As they got over the shock, they started recognizing the police dogs that were there. And, oh yeah, the women there, too."

Olszewski said female rescue workers are a stoic lot, but she sensed they wanted to share their ordeals not for glory but for catharsis and inspiration.

"I don't think that, at any time in my life, I've ever felt so emotionally drained as I did after the interview with Susan and Mary," said Olszewski, who set up a triage unit at the North Tower shortly after the first plane hit and narrowly escaped death when the tower collapsed. "I was wiped out. An hour and a half had gone by, but it seemed like five minutes.

"The two of them had to listen to 30 emotional stories right after it happened, so it probably had to affect Susan and Mary," she said. "They're really a story in themselves."

Carouba scoffed at that idea, jokingly saying the next book they plan to write will be called "Women at Income Zero." They, along with Oakland photographer Joyce Benna, spent six weeks in New York carrying tape recorders in one hand and maps of lower Manhattan in the other.

COMPREHENDING HUGE LOSSES

One of the first police officers Carouba found the night she boldly trolled for subjects in the restaurant was Sgt. Carey Policastro.

Policastro, a 12-year police veteran in Brooklyn, gained access to ground zero for Carouba and Hagen. There, amid the debris, the dump trucks and cranes, they met more female rescue workers and felt the enormity of the event hit home.

"As a firefighter, I know how devastating it is when I go out on a call and there's, say, a fatal vehicle accident," Hagen said. "It affects you. One of the women rescue workers down there said to me, after we interviewed her, 'You guys ought to come back in a year and see how many of us are still alive.' They're facing a lot of post-traumatic stress issues."

Hagen and Carouba hope to ease the stress on the female rescue workers by bringing 30 of them to Sonoma County for a week in early November for "rest and relaxation" in the Wine Country. The two are trying to raise $100,000 for the women's trip west, and they plan to start a Women at Ground Zero scholarship fund at Santa Rosa Junior College.

"These women are so tough on the outside," Carouba said. "But they trusted us and opened themselves up to us. Writing the book and bringing them out here seems like a rather paltry thing to do, but it's a start."

Donations to help provide trips to California for female rescue workers can be sent to Women at Ground Zero, c/o United Way, P.O. Box 2641, Santa Rosa, CA 95405, or go to www.womenatgroundzero.com on the Web to send e-mail.

E-mail Sam McManis at smcmanis@sfchronicle.com.