If you drive around Fairfield County this week, you might see something unusual – a man pushing a beverage cart. That man is Paul Veneto, a former flight attendant honoring his friends and colleagues who died on Sept. 11.

“Paulie’s Push” is crossing Connecticut on the way to the World Trade Center site in New York City.

On Tuesday morning, Veneto arrived in Bridgeport to a hero’s welcome.

“God bless you, sir,” a woman called out from the side of Stratford Avenue.

Veneto is a man on a mission. He’s pushing an airline beverage cart 220 miles from Boston’s Logan Airport to the 9/11 memorial – the same path that American Flight 11 took when it crashed into one of the Twin Towers.

“The weather doesn't bother me,” Veneto said as he walked from Stratford to Fairfield. “You know why? Because I have every option in the world out here. Those crew members didn’t have any options.”

Veneto lost nine of his colleagues on American Flight 175, the other plane that crashed into the World Trade Center. He would have been one of them, had the attacks happened just hours earlier.

“I came in the night before. I landed at 8 p.m. in Boston,” he said. “I got off the airplane the next morning. I knew the crew that was on that plane that hit the second tower.”

The firefighters who escorted Veneto feel a unique bond with him.

“You hear about all these other stories of, you know, a firefighter who called in sick that day or, you know, had to wait for his wife to come home, so he was late, and ended up not being there on that day,” said Capt. Stephen O'Hara, with the Stratford Fire Department.

This is the fourth Paulie's Push. Veneto has traced a different flight path each year, including Newark N.J. to Shanksville, Pa., last year

News 12 Connecticut profiled his first journey in 2021, which followed the path of Veneto’s co-workers on Flight 175.

Now that he’s completed all four routes, Veneto thinks it’s time to hand the cart off for the 25th anniversary of 9-11 in 2026.

“Let the community push for the cart for three days – school kids, anybody,” he said. “And then it goes to the next town, and the next town, so everybody gets involved in it.”

You can track Paulie’s Push across southwestern Connecticut in real time HERE . You can donate to the cause HERE.