This week a friend of mine experienced a tragic incident where her
younger brother committed suicide.  Before this happened the young man
left a voicemail on her cell phone.  I was wondering if there is a way
to transfer a cell phone voicemail message to a tape or preferably a
CD (i.e. a digital file).  She would like to preserve the message as a
lasting memory of her brother.

I'm not 100% who her cell phone provider or what type of phone she has
but could find that out in case it matters.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Easiest Way is to find a quiet room and play the voicemail with a
microphone right up to the phone's speaker. Using a mic hooked to your
computer will be easiest. The resulting file can be edited and burned
to CD

Some phone models (Sony Ericsson T610 for sure) have a voice record
feature which can be used to record the Voicemail and then can be sent
as an email to an email address. Then it is quite easy to edit and
burn to CD.

Try to get this done in a timely manner. Voicemails can be
accidentally erased or overwritten when too many voicemails reach the
inbox.

A google researcher may want to give more detailed directions... (e.g.
file types associated with cell phone audio and converting to a
readable CD format)

The service provider may have an option to provide the message in
digital form, most likely via email.

For higher sound quality than recording from the speaker with a
microphone, you could use a product like the JK Audio Cell Tap.

http://www.jkaudio.com/celltap.htm

you can always do a call forwarding on your cell phone to your home
answer machine and just record the message just remember that call
forward will cost you minutes

after you got the message on tape you can always hook up a tape desk
to your computer and record on line in to WAv then burn on cd