As she did every weekday morning, Grace Yang-Sim Kim walked her son David La, who has Down syndrome, to his day program on the University of Toronto downtown campus.

On that walk home last Nov. 7, an encounter with a van at the intersection of Spadina Ave. and Harbord St. ended one life and upended two others.

Kim, 63, was struck and suffered head injuries. She died the next day. With that, David La, 27, lost his main caregiver. His older brother Eugene La, 35, was left with the task of picking up the pieces.

It has not been easy, particularly with no other family in Toronto.

After the blur of a funeral and the reality that he must step up, Eugene is now playing the role of his mother, getting David to and from his program, and caring for him at all other hours.

He is also hoping he can figure out a way, financially, to guarantee proper future care for his brother — and, if possible, keep a dream of his mother’s alive.

A silkscreen artist who studied her craft in Korea before coming to Canada in the ’70s, Kim hoped to use her life savings to provide a better home for her and the boys she’d raised on her own.

Kim, who lived in a small two-bedroom apartment with David, had planned to move into something nicer this year, said Eugene.

“We didn’t have a lot of money growing up,” Eugene said, after a reporter called recently about a poster Eugene had placed at the accident scene, looking for witnesses.

“She was really close to reaching her dream. I want to try to make that happen. She was always worried about what’s going to happen with David if something would happen to her, so I’m going to do my best to finish everything she started.”

With their nearest relatives living in New York and Vancouver, Eugene, who has a job in online marketing, has seen his life radically change since his mother’s death.

He rushes David to his day program and rushes to work, and remains busy tending to his mother’s estate and other issues that come with sudden death. There have been offers from friends of his mother’s to assist, but he isn’t sure how they can be of immediate help, other than offering to spell him off from looking after David.

“He’s a good kid,” Eugene said of David, who he likened to a well-mannered 12-year-old.

Eugene also spoke with friends from his mother’s church, Knox Presbyterian, and to businesses along Harbord St. about getting some help. It was suggested a trust fund be established for David.

Following the call to Eugene from the Star, Eugene went about having a formal trust account created in the hope it might offer the security for his brother, something that his mother so worried about. There are also outstanding costs from the funeral.

“I didn’t realize funerals were so expensive,” said Eugene.

No charges have been laid in connection with his mother’s death. Kim was struck by a 2012 Mercedes van, driven by a 38-year-old man. Police, in a Nov. 11 news release , said she was hit by the westbound van while trying to cross the intersection, and appealed for witnesses.

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After his mother was buried, Eugene took some time to walk the area where the accident happened and also canvass for witnesses. He taped a poster to a garbage can near the intersection, stating that a family needs vital information and that a “single mother leaves behind a disabled son.”

He’d like to know more about what happened, since she made that walk every day.

Kim came to Canada with dreams of making a mark as a silkscreen artist. She did have a couple of exhibitions but Toronto, she found, was not as hot an art scene as New York, London or Paris, said Eugene.

She worked in nursing for a bit and with the birth of her children, concentrated on raising them by herself. Taking care of David was in itself a full-time job, said Eugene, who said his father’s side of the family is in British Columbia.

Kim was a giving person, although she had little herself. Before her death, she was busy making jewelry to help raise funds for a program for children with disabilities, said Eugene.

Eugene had her organs donated. He assumed that is what she would have wanted.

He did not say so in so many words, but he seemed to be feeling the weight of his new responsibilities. “Right now I’m just trying to get everything organized,” said Eugene. “I knew this day would come one day, just not so soon. It happened very suddenly and it’s been a life changer, that’s for sure.”

The trust fund Eugene has set up for his brother will help David financially, while protecting his ability to receive government disability benefits. Alternate beneficiaries of the trust are the Canadian Down Syndrome Society and Milal Mission, an organization that assists people with disabilities.

Donations to the Intervivos Henson Trust for David La can be made at TD Canada Trust, transit number 17602-004, account number 5218840.

Anyone with information about the accident can contact Eugene at 416-829-5785 and police at 416-808-1900, or through Crime Stoppers at 416-222-TIPS (8477).

As she did every weekday morning, Grace Yang-Sim Kim walked her son David La, who has Down syndrome, to his day program on the University of Toronto downtown campus.