STUNNED: The emergence of Rachel Uchitel in the Tiger Woods scandal has surprised James O’Grady, whose 9/11-victim son, Andy, was engaged to her. This picture (inset) of Uchitel crying appeared in The Post days after the 9/11 attacks as she sought her fiancé.
“She was a different person then.”
Those were the words spoken by Rachel Uchitel’s bewildered would-be father-in-law, as he sadly recalled yesterday the stark changes she’s undergone since she lost her fiancé on 9/11.
In the years after becoming the “face” of grief of the terror attacks in an iconic front-page Post photo — clutching a “missing” poster of her husband-to-be, Andy O’Grady — Uchitel barreled into a wild new life that culminated with her involvement in the sensational Tiger Woods sex scandal.
O’Grady was 32 and a managing director for investment bank Sandler O’Neill when he died after the second plane slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center.
Since his death, the stunning Uchitel, now 33, reinvented herself as jet-setting, VIP hostess at trendy nightclubs, who wound up on front pages across the country this week as the golf legend’s alleged mistress.
For O’Grady’s dad, James, 9/11 changed her into a woman he can barely recognize.
“The last time I saw [Uchitel] was at the burial of my son — she’s not the person she appears to be now,” he said. “She wasn’t trying to be in the papers [back then]. Maybe 9/11 had an impact on her and this is how she’s dealing with that.”
Speaking outside his Harrington Park, NJ, home yesterday, O’Grady said he lost touch with Uchitel after terrorists killed his son.
“I haven’t had any contact with her whatsoever,” the dad said. “He [Andy O’Grady] loved her.”
But a family friend of Uchitel isn’t surprised by the publicity she has drawn since her loss.
“This is the kind of attention that she craves,” said Colleen Clabby, Uchitel’s grandfather’s girlfriend of 20 years.
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The hottie came from a broken family with a history of addictions, Clabby said. Her father, Bob Uchitel, an Alaskan entrepreneur, died of a cocaine overdose in 1990. He was Alaska’s first cable-TV operator.
“He became the victim of drug abuse,” Clabby said.
Uchitel rarely saw her father after he and her mother, Susan Bishop, divorced in 1979 and he moved to Anchorage.
Judy Blake, who dated Bob Uchitel for five years, said Rachel visited him only once in Alaska — a two-week trip when she was 11.
The father and daughter stayed in touch by phone, but toward the end of Bob Uchitel’s life, his addiction spiraled, making it difficult to have a conversation, according to Blake.
“The last time he spoke to her, he was in a stupor,” Blake said.
Uchitel’s relationship with her grandfather, Maurice Uchitel, wasn’t much better, sources said.
A prominent Big Apple nightclub owner, Maurice moved to Las Vegas in his senior years and spent much of his time gambling.
Shortly before Maurice Uchitel’s death in 2000, Clabby persuaded him to reconnect with Rachel.
He even left her about $150,000 in his will, according to lawyers involved.
Before she was identified as Woods’ globe-trotting gal pal, Rachel Uchitel was among the best-known behind-the-scenes figures in New York’s celebrity nightclub business. Her job was to bring in the big players.
“She was very aggressive working in the clubs,” a pal of hers said. “She was always hustling, working with the celebrities. She’s got a big agenda.”
Uchitel didn’t mind rubbing elbows with New York’s elite — or boasting about it, sources said.
Woods’ alleged mistress, who claims to have met the disgraced duffer at Derek Jeter’s Manhattan pad, has bragged to friends about dating the Yankee captain and other celebrities.
Uchitel became a front-page tabloid name when the National Enquirer last week identified her as Woods’ gal pal. She has denied the allegation and is currently holed up in Los Angeles, huddling with celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred.
Uchitel was allegedly going to spill the beans about her rumored trysts with Woods at a press conference on Thursday — before Allred mysteriously pulled the plug.
But Allred’s daughter, Lisa Bloom, a CNN legal analyst, said, “The only reason why the press conference was canceled and she’s remained silent is if there’s a significant deal in the works.”.
Yesterday, Radar Online reported that Uchitel will get between $1 million and $3 million to keep her mouth shut.
Meanwhile, a report of a fourth alleged Woods mistress emerged last night. The woman, a former cocktail server, claims she met Woods in 2004 at the age of 20 near his Orlando home and had a two-year affair , according to TMZ.com.
Additional reporting by Emily Smith and Tom Liddy