Doohee Cho
33 years old

Doohee Cho met Jen Kosakowski in their Bayonne, New Jersey kindergarten class. The families were close. Kosakowski’s father would stop in every morning on his way to work at a convenience store owned by Cho’s parents. The kindergarten classmates also went to high school together, then to college at Rutgers - New Brunswick. Kosakowski remembered that even when she moved to California to pursue a PhD, Cho flew out to visit her.

“It was just always amazing to me because people just come in and out of your life for whatever reason,” Kosakowski said. “Doohee was one of those people that I never lost contact with.”

She said Cho was “fiercely intelligent,” someone who “always had that roguish twinkle in his eye.” He made friends everywhere, even waiting in line at restaurants.

Two years ago, Kosakowski had moved back east, and Cho was working at General Electric as a vice president for asset finance. They met at a wine bar in Manhattan, near his apartment in the West Village. He ordered a $75 bottle of wine, and “he just kind of opened up,” she said. “It turns out that we had kind of been in love with each other since we were 18.”

When they told their parents, and then their friends from elementary and high school, the reactions were unanimous: “Oh God, finally,” Kosakowski’s mother said. They were planning to marry next year.

This collision happened on September 28, 2014 near Fifth Avenue between 15th and 16th Streets in Manhattan. See details in the Mean Streets Tracker.

Mean Streets 2014: Who We Lost, How They Lived

Throughout 2014, WNYC tracked the 265 men, women and children killed in traffic crashes in New York City. In addition to reporting the circumstances of their deaths, we looked at who they were in life: mothers, fathers, grandparents, students, recent immigrants and native New Yorkers. To read some of their stories, click on a photograph.