THE MAN WHO COULD HAVE SAVED JFK JR.

The cell phone ringing quite loudly in the hotel room jolted me awake. It was about 4 a.m. Saturday, July 17, 1999.

I was in Asheville, N.C., for The National ENQUIRER trying to find out why hometown girl, actress Andie MacDowell, was getting a divorce. I'd been there five days and was getting a lot of doors slammed in my face.

The caller was a reporter buddy of mine, a guy I worked with at the New York Daily News.

"You awake," he asked.

"Almost. Why are you calling me at this hour?"

My friend was giving me a heads up on a tip he'd just gotten. John F. Kennedy Jr. was probably dead. The night before, the freshman pilot had flown his plane into the ocean on his way to Martha's Vineyard. They think his wife was on board too.

Now I was wide awake. I thanked my friend and woke up ENQUIRER editor David Perel.

As did all news organization around the world, we pulled out all the stops.

Three reporters were rushed to Martha's Vineyard. I caught a flight to New York City (first class, too). Reporter Mike Hanrahan came up to join me from our Lantana, Fl., headquarters. Other reporters back in Lantana and in our Los Angeles bureau were working the phones.

I was always impressed that some ENQUIRER colleagues had pretty good sources among the Kennedy clan. They should have hated us. We were never really kind to the Kennedys, but suffice to say they were always getting into trouble.

Running our JFK Jr. coverage was Barry Levine, the only articles editor The ENQUIRER had in New York City. Barry was nurtured in the business as a reporter with tabloid TV shows and he had a way of coming up with assignments that landed us a lot of exclusives.

By lockup, just three days after the crash, we had a pretty good Page One story that I wound up writing but this saga was just beginning.

The media now knew, JFK Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and her sister Lauren Bessette were dead in the waters off Martha's Vineyard.

JFK Jr., not fully experienced enough to fly his Piper Saratoga using just the instrument panel, had taken off late in the day. He became disoriented as darkness set in and flew the plane into the sea.

The Prince of Camelot had had a series of flight instructors, first down in Vero Beach, Fl., and now,. in New Jersey, where he kept his Piper Saratoga aircraft  at Essex County Airport, not too far from Manhattan.

As the second week of coverage into the tragedy began, it was reported that Kennedy's most recent flight instructor had offered to go with him to Martha's Vineyard, where JFK Jr., his wife and sister-in-law were to attend a wedding.

Kennedy told him he didn't need the help. It would be light enough to fly visually. It wasn't.

The flight instructor's name was not revealed to the press, so I suggested to editor Levine that we try to find him. The guy had to be feeling pretty depressed.

I had a contact with the Federal Aviation Administration who gave me a name. Our research department got me an address, an apartment complex in the New York borough of Queens.

He wasn't home when I showed up so I sat down on a bench in a park-like area outside his building, waiting to see if he arrived. It was a nice day.

I noticed a maintenance worker doing some sweeping up nearby and as he passed by my bench, I said hello. I told him who I was, who I was looking for and he said he knew the guy, that he was a cop.

Did he know if the resident was JFK Jr.'s flight instructor and the maintenance guy nodded his head. He told me this heartbreaking tale about how the cop and his wife lost their son in an apartment fire, that the cop now thought of his flight pupil, JFK Jr., as a son.

I headed back to my hotel room, where I did some Internet searching. I found a story in a local Queens paper about the cop and his wife and the tragic fire. Turns out the cop was a high-ranking NYPD chief.

The story was getting good -- until I called the cop and he told me straight out that I was dead wrong. He was not JFK Jr.'s flight instructor. He didn't know how to pilot a plane. He got a kick out of my phone call.

I was totally confused. That maintenance worker had spun this really believable yarn. I called my contact at the FAA.

Was he sure about the name? He said he would double-check and get back to me.

Well, it seems he'd gotten the name pretty close but totally misspelled it and for some God-knows-how reason, it matched the cop's name. The name I wanted was Jay Biederman.

I called editor Levine and told him to forget about the details I had given him. I had to start all over again.

I kept wondering if that maintenance guy was just some crazy loon or some ENQUIRER hater who decided to jerk me around.

Okay, I called research again. Gave them the right name and found that Biederman lived in the West 20s, the Chelsea area of Manhattan a part of the garment center world dubbed the Fur District.

I had five days until deadline, so I tried to find out as much as I could about Biederman.

By 1999, most media organizations, The ENQUIRER included, purchased database services such as Faces of the Nation. We called them auto-tracks. Punch in a name, an appoximate age, an address, a Social Security number if you had it, and up came the person, every address where they ever resided, neighbors' listings, any criminal record, relatives, many phone numbers.

Biederman's auto-track led me to his parents. Dad was a high mucky muck at a big university. I called his office. A friendly secretary revealed Biederman was with his parents skiing in Switzerland when Kennedy's plane went down.

In calls from the parents, she knew the young man  was wracked with guilt, feeling he should have been on that plane. JFK Jr. should still be alive.

Calling every phone number on Biederman's auto-track led me to a few friends, who also confirmed that their pal was suffering.

"They had flown together many times," said Michael Kydonieus, Biederman's Manhattan roommate. "That same flight [to Martha's Vineyard]. And John usually flew the whole way. He did everything, take off, land . . . he did everything."

Just four days before the crash, with Biederman aboard, Kennedy had flown to Toronto seeking financial aid from businessman Keith Stein to save his struggling magazine, George.

The instructor was on board because JFK Jr., healing from a broken foot -- an injury suffered in a paragliding accident -- was finding it hard to work the pedals of his Piper Saratoga.

Biederman had planned to fly with Kennedy on that fateful day, Kydonieus said, but JFK Jr. felt comfortable enough to fly the plane himself.

So, Biederman took off to join his family on the Switzerland trip.

Friends of Biederman's family, knowing that he often flew with Kennedy, spent anxious hours before learning that the young man was safe with his family in the Alps.

I had enough for a story, but we needed a photo. A memorial was scheduled at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan for Friday, July 23, six days after the tragedy. Biederman surely would be going.

For three days, eight hours each day, I stood outside Biederman's apartment building with a freelance photographer.

The building was next to a small parking lot. I got friendly with the attendant, an Hispanic gentleman who didn't speak English all that well. But, in my high school Spanish (I never studied), I got across who I was and what I was doing there.

"John-John?" the attendant said, realizing who I was talking about. He knew Biederman. In fact, the instructor's car was "over there," he said. I took a look inside. Nothing I could use.

I was getting tired by the end of the third day, the day of the memorial. So was the photog. We hadn't seen Biederman.

Suddenly, a little after five or so, an unmarked livery car pulled up and this young man in a suit got out.

I called out his name and he looked. I told him who I was and he acknowledged he was Biederman but had nothing to say. Our shutterbug, however, got the photo.

Seemed like a lot of work. But we had an exclusive about Mr. Biederman. I could only imagine what he was going through.