At last month’s congressional hearing on future funding for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, it was Jon Stewart who got the press attention. Stewart, onetime host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, raised his voice, waved his arms, and shrewdly chose to direct his ire at, among others, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. A few days later, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the CBS late-night show starring his former Comedy Central colleague, Stewart got a standing ovation from the audience with a series of jokes at the Kentucky Republican’s expense.

Which is too bad, for the most compelling witness at the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing that day was not Stewart but Luis Gustavo Alvarez, a 53-year-old retired New York City police detective from Queens who, immediately after the 9/11 attacks, spent three months sifting through debris from the World Trade Center, searching at first for survivors and later for the remains of fellow officers and other first responders.