NEW YORK – New Yorkers from a neighborhood ravaged by Superstorm Sandy lined up in a school auditorium Thursday to receive $1,000 debit cards from a financial services firm that lost hundreds of employees in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

“This is such a help to my little son who is emotionally challenged and lost everything,” said Debbie Torres, clutching her cash card from the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald. “God, thank you. These people here, thank you. Thank everybody.”

Cantor Fitzgerald, whose Sept. 11 death toll of 658 was by far the largest of any employer, announced Thursday that it will “adopt” 19 schools in communities hit by Sandy and give a total of $10 million to families in those schools.

Cantor Fitzgerald, its relief fund and its affiliate BGC Partners are donating $1,000 each to 10,000 families to spend as they see fit. The schools are in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Long Island and New Jersey. Cantor officials joined elected leaders at Public School 256 in Far Rockaway on Thursday to start the effort.

Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick said he learned after Cantor’s devastating loss of so many employees with young children that help should come with no strings attached.

“The best way to take care of a family is to put money in the hands of the parents and let them decide what to do,” he said. “Maybe they need a couch and maybe they need to go to Toys R Us and buy their kids a present.”

Cantor Fitzgerald’s headquarters on the 101st through 105th floors of One World Trade Center were destroyed when terrorists struck the tower, and the company lost two-thirds of its New York workforce. Lutnick was not in the office but his brother Gary was killed.

Each year on Sept. 11 the company donates the day’s revenues to charity and employees donate their day’s pay. The effort raised $12 million last September.

“We wanted to have a way that we could memorialize those that we lost in a way that was positive, and to do good things,” Edie Lutnick said.