About a month after a mother of 6 was killed in a DUI crash, her husband is sharing his gratitude for the outpouring of support from the community, and the challenges that lie ahead for his family.

On Oct. 6, 37-year-old Katie Evans was on her way home from visiting her premature twin girls in the hospital when she was killed by a drunk driver just a mile from her home, leaving her grieving husband, Jacob, to care for all six of their young children.

Katie Evans holding her premature twin girls, Sarah and Hannah, before her death.

“We hurt obviously, and that’s something we’re trying to get through, but we’re doing as well as you can expect,” Jacob told the KHTS Features team. “We’ve had just such a great outpouring (of support) from the community that it’s been pretty overwhelming… It’s really humbling to be the recipient of so much kindness.”

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Friends, neighbors and complete strangers have donated over $350,000 on YouCaring, cooked meals for the family and even offered to take the Evans boys — who range in age from two to 12 — to and from school and activities.

In addition, a Facebook page called “Care and Assist Katie Evans’ Family” was created by the Santa Clarita Coalition in partnership with Jacob as a platform for those who want to offer their help but wouldn’t know how to reach him otherwise.

Thanks to the community’s help in making sure the boys are taken care of, Jacob was able to return to work recently, which he noted took a bigger toll on him than he expected.

“I came back that first day really just emotionally exhausted, and I went upstairs to lie down, just to rest, and it was hard because it hit me when I laid down that Katie would usually be sitting right there,” he said. “When I had a hard day from work, we would have talked about it, or talked about her day or talked about the boys’ day. And she wasn’t there, so I actually had to get up and leave because I couldn’t deal with it.”

Jacob and Katie Evans with their four sons.

Since he went back to work, Jacob has been able to visit his now almost 3-month-old twins, Hannah and Sarah, in the hospital about once a week, with friends and family spending time with them on days he can’t be there.

He gets a call from NICU doctors daily, and both girls have more than tripled in size since they were born, each hovering around four pounds each.

“They’re still really small,” Jacob said. “But they had a big milestone this week, because they’re able to regulate their body temperature enough that they are now graduated from incubators, and now they’re in regular cribs.”

When the girls are released from the hospital — tentatively planned for December, depending on their progress breathing and eating on their own — Jacob noted his world will change yet again, and he’s going to need even more help taking care of his family.

“I think the real challenge is going to be when the girls come home, because when the girls come home everything changes,” he said. “I know I’m going to need a lot of help.”

Sarah and Hannah Evans.

Because he can’t have different people caring for them a day or two at a time, Jacob will need to hire professional caregivers for both daytime and overnight, and hopes to have a group of volunteers who can fill any gaps.

As he prepares for the twins’ homecoming and continues to take care of his four boys, Jacob said he has a newfound appreciation for all of Katie’s efforts as a mother when she was alive.

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“Now that she’s gone there’s a lot of things I really appreciate even more about her,” he said. “The way that she was so patient with the kids all the time and made them feel like they were the most important thing in the world, the way that she worked with the schools to make sure that everything was right — just all the little things that now seem so hard to me that she just did so naturally and so well.”

And now Jacob has a deeply personal message for the community about drinking and driving, and for those who may not say anything to an intoxicated person about to get behind the wheel because “it’s none of their business”:

“I’ve never actually had a drink in my life and Katie never had a drink in her life, and yet drunk driving is definitely our business,” he said. “My hope is that people will not only not drink and drive, but they won’t tolerate other people drinking and driving — they’ll stand up and stop people from making a bad decision.”

He continued, “It’s not just about that person. It’s about who might be impacted by that bad decision.”