When I saw Rachel Uchitel’s photo on the front of every newspaper and website this morning I gasped in shock. We’ve never met, but I felt like I knew her. I remember her heartbreaking image on the cover of the New York Post, a young woman with tears streaming down her face helplessly holding a photo of her missing fiancé, Andy O’Grady, who worked on the 104th floor of Tower Two and who on that day is missing and presumed dead. “She embodied the empty, pain of those who searching for a relative or a friend. She embodied the confusion and anguish of an entire city.”

I stared at her photo and it hit me like a ton of bricks: she could have been me. We were the same age, both worked in NYC, both engaged to great guys, both living the city life. But my fiancé didn’t die on 9/11, and hers did. And the closeness of that realization shook me to the bone.

In the last 8 years, I’ve followed her comings and goings (marriage, divorce, a move to Vegas) hoping she would find her true love again. Never did I imagine she would end up here.

In December 2001, three months after 9/11, the New York Post checked in on Rachel Uchitel to see how she was coping with the devastating loss of the love of her life. “When he died, I felt his strength transferred to me, and I want to be strong for other people. My whole life completely changed. Nothing in it is the same,” Uchitel said. “I’ve lost the closest person to me in the whole world.”

On the morning of the attacks, Uchitel, an editor at Bloomberg News, watched in horror as the carnage unfolded on TV monitors in her office. She talked to O’Grady briefly after the first plane hit the north tower. Then came a second call. “Rachel, it’s really chaotic here,” he told her. “You don’t understand. I just saw somebody jump out the window.”

“It hit me, but [the scope] didn’t completely hit me,” she said. “I never feared for him.”

Later, desperate to find O’Grady, she went from hospital to hospital for a week, hoping for word that he had been knocked unconscious and injured. Like thousands of others, Uchitel plastered hundreds of fliers on walls and windows throughout New York. In the end, all she had left were memories.

“It’s very strange. I remember every single detail about Andy: his smell, the clothes he wore, his laugh,” she said. “I still remember him as if he were right here beside me now.”

In December 2004, the New York Post reported that Rachel Uchitel found love again when she married 29-year-old trader Steven Ehrenkranz Nov. 20 inside the Flatiron Cipriani at the Toy Building.

The newlyweds first met when they were 12 as private-school students, and they became friends in their late teens. Along the way, the two lost touch for several years, but met up again at a 2003 Halloween party.

In an eerie twist, on the morning of 9/11, Ehrenkranz was interviewing for a job with Cantor Fitzgerald in the north tower.  Fortunately, Ehrenkranz chose to skip another round of interviews so he could get to work across the street. The three people Ehrenkranz had interviewed with that morning died.

Despite a fairy-tale wedding in front of 270 people at the Flatiron Cipriani, the marriage had an unhappy ending; the pair divorced four months after they wed. “I made the mistake of thinking marriage would make someone stay because I was so fearful of being left again after 9/11,” she said.

In September 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks, the New York Post caught up with Rachel Uchitel who had married, divorced, moved to Las Vegas and fallen into the arms of the man who gave her her first childhood kiss, Jason Strauss.

Uchitel carved out a dazzling new life as the VIP door hostess at Tao, and the girlfriend of one of its partners, nightclub heavy Jason Strauss, who is also co-owner of Marquee in Chelsea. The pair had been each other’s first kiss at age 12 and had dated on and off over the years. When Strauss saw his friend struggling, he offered her a job at Tao to distract her from her failing marriage and to give her a change of scenery.

“I don’t look at Jason as a huge player in the nightclub scene. I see him deeper, as the person that hardly anyone gets to know, which makes me feel lucky to have that connection with him,” she said.

Two years later she was back in NYC to run the VIP operations at NYC hot spots Marquee, Stanton Social and Pink Elephant. She’s also a managing partner at Griffin, where she apparently first met a certain pro golfer.

Then came scandal. Last month it was reported that Rachel was having an affair with Bones star David Boreanaz. To make matters worse, Boreanaz’s wife of eight years, Jaime Bergman, was pregnant with their second child. Reportedly Rachel and David met during the celebration of his 40th birthday at Griffin. Rachel dumped David two weeks after the birth of his daughter and Boreanaz has since reconciled with his wife.

Enter Tiger Woods:

In a bombshell National Enquirer story, a young lady from Las Vegas named Ashley Samson alleges that Rachel Uchitel, a friend of hers, has been enjoying a months-long affair with married pro golfer Tiger Woods. As speculation that Woods’ car accident occurred after he fought with wife Elin Nordegren over the revelations. Tiger’s lips are sealed and Uchitel has arrived in Los Angeles for a pow-wow with high-profile celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred to get her through the media scandal. “I am overwhelmed, so I hired Gloria Allred to handle the situation. I don’t want to get this much attention, and I wish everybody would leave me alone.”

Black Book spoke with Uchitel and asked for her side of the story. “I’ve had better days,” she began before clearing the air on a few things:

● “I don’t appreciate my name or what people think of me being dragged through the mud by people who don’t even bother to research what or who they’re talking about … they should research who these stories are coming from, who they’re believing as a credible source. Not to mention that it’s in the National Enquirer.”
● “I totally deny the Enquirer story. They did contact me about it, but they didn’t use any of my quotes or any of the information I gave them. They make it sound like I said those things, but it’s all other people saying I said things.”
● On the story’s report that she followed Woods to Australia and was observed checking into his hotel and riding the elevator to the 35th floor, where Woods had a suite: “There’s just no possible way I could have done that. You can’t just walk into a place like that and ride the elevator to a floor with someone like Tiger Woods on it without someone seeing you and stopping you.”

● On allegedly sending racy text messages to Woods: “If you talked to any of my old boyfriends, and I’m sure they all hate me, but they’d all confirm that I don’t sex-message. I don’t do it, I don’t know how to do it.”
● On Ashley Samson, the “close friend” of Uchitel’s who provided all the information to the Enquirer, along with another unnamed source, both of whom supposedly “passed” a polygraph: “I’ve met her twice in my life. We’re not friends. I’m just speculating but it seems like someone else is telling her what to say or manipulating her. After all, she got $25,000 for this.”

To be continued…