Memories Haunt Widow After Apartment Collapse

Hyun Sook Lee couldn’t sleep again Saturday night, after searching all day for mementos in the ruins of Apartment 101 at Northridge Meadows, where the collapsing walls and ceiling crushed her husband and teen-age son during the Jan. 17 quake.

“I am never going there again,” Lee, 43, said Tuesday, as she and her lawyers filed the seventh wrongful death lawsuit against the builder and owner of Northridge Meadows. Like the other lawsuits, it alleges that construction flaws contributed to the collapse, which killed Lee’s husband, Pil, a Korean-educated engineer who worked as an RTD mechanic, and their son, Howard, a student who aspired to be a priest.

She was able to retrieve some photographs Saturday, along with a video and a battered Asian chest. Her wedding ring was nowhere to be found.

She considers the ring gone, like the life she had built with husband Pil, whom everyone knew as James. The Lees had weathered hardship before, moving to Northridge Meadows in 1993 when they lost their spacious Valley home after the family’s restaurant business failed. As long as they were together, the Lees endured. But the quake shattered even that modest life.

“We lost everything in one second,” she said. “We lost the head of our family and the big son. We only have the small son.”

She is fatalistic about the future, and although she maintains her composure, the quiver in her chin reveals that tears are never far from the surface.

“Nobody can build up the same life as before,” Lee said. “Once it’s gone, it’s gone. It’s gone for good.”

But the horrible memories stay, especially at night, when sleep still won’t come. Then she remembers her panic and confusion as she recited Hail Marys in the darkened cave that had been their apartment, waiting for help to come.

After praying with son Jason, 12, on Tuesday morning, Lee dressed in a business suit and accompanied lawyers to file legal papers at the San Fernando Superior Court clerk’s office, itself displaced by the quake to Van Nuys. Her lawyer, William J. Downey III, also filed nearly identical lawsuits for the families of two other Northridge Meadows victims, Darla Enos and Ruth Wilhelm.

Families of seven of the 16 people who died at Northridge Meadows have sued, and more lawsuits are expected.

Lee, a nurse, said her lawsuit “is not about greed.”

“Sometimes people have to stand up for their rights,” she said quietly.

Her lawyers, Downey and Myron M. Kim, said the suit seeks unspecified monetary damages to provide for Jason’s education and allow the Lees to start over.

“They have been relying on the charity of friends and members of their church to scrape by, and that’s not something that a proud family like the Lees wants to continue,” Downey said.

Lee said her greatest worry is for Jason. “He’s very quiet,” she said, adding that he often prays and talks to a priest from their church.

Lee said she doesn’t know where she belongs, or what she will do. She is a woman without a husband or a home, caught between two cultures.

She felt uncomfortable during a recent trip to her Korean homeland, where widows often do not remarry. Yet she doesn’t feel completely at ease in her adopted country, where she has lost everything except her faith and her younger son.

Here, at least, mother and son have fallen into a routine. They pray together every morning and evening, for the lost father and son, hoping their souls are happy and at peace.

Doctors recently removed a cast from Jason’s right leg, which was pinned by rubble. He finally walks without crutches. They are planning to move at the end of the month to a house near Jason’s school, affiliated with St. Bridget of Sweden Church in Van Nuys.

Every day after Lee drops Jason at school, she attends an 8 a.m. Catholic Mass. She spends the day at the library, reading novels and religious books to improve her English. Lee, a nurse, has not worked since the earthquake. She plans to return in September to her job at the Jewish Home for the Aged, a Reseda convalescent home.

“In the past 2 1/2 years, Korean Americans have suffered a series of disasters,” lawyer Myron Kim said. “None have suffered as much as Mrs. Lee, losing two family members. She in effect lost her American dream.”