His 11-year-old daughter Tia was hit and killed by a car in a Shoreline crosswalk in 2002. She was on her way to school. The first car stopped but the second driver didn't see her.

"The sun set and the sun rose with my daughter," he told us through his tears.

But in the last four years he's turned those tears into action. Tia soon became the acronym for Traffic Intersection Awareness.

He formed the foundation to fight for crosswalk improvements. He secured better lighting and crosswalk equipment at the intersection where his daughter died and at other locations.

He has taken his fight to re-educate drivers nationwide. He was even willing to stand with us and a radar gun in a Seattle school zone, flagging down drivers who were speeding well over the posted limit, and confront them one at a time to tell Tia's story again.

Her name became synonymous with the fight to get people to slow down. He repeats this line again and again: "Don't let the five minutes you save getting somewhere be the last five minutes of someone's life."

Now his life has taken another bad turn.

"Glioblastoma multiforme brain cancer," he told me on Wednesday as we sat in the front yard of his Edmonds home. "And it's in my spinal cord and my cerebelum."

He has been diagnosed with the most common and the most aggressive of primary brain tumors. His doctors, and he has sought at least four second opinions, tell him there is no cure and that conventional medicine including radiation and chemotherapy can only buy him a little more time: perhaps six months to a year.

But Dave answered their sentence by saying this: "I'm not scared. I don't want to (die), but I'm not scared."

He told me he's able to say that because he feels his last four years, working in Tia's memory, have made a difference.

Pedestrian safety became his life. He speaks to anyone or any organization willing to hear his story. His website,www.traffic-intersection-awareness.com, has become a clearing house for information on pedestrian safety.

Some of the money he received in a settlement from the city of Shoreline was even used to customize a PT Cruiser. Its paint job, decals, and even the license plates scream pedestrian safety. He was even willing to have a coffin painted on the tailgate along with his daughter's birth and death dates and his ubiquitous quote about "the last five minutes of someone's life."

He takes it to school functions, car shows, community parades and events and plays a 17-minute compilation of stories about Tia on several TV screens installed in the car. It is the "wow" he says that gets people to start asking him "why?"

But he is not asking "why me?" after this second round of devastating news.

"It wasn't fair to her," he said of Tia's death at the age of 11. "40 years old isn't fair to me. But I did something with my life. I didn't just waste it. I didn't just exist."

And as he begins a regimen of alternative cancer treatments he vows that in the time he does have left he will keep shouting Tia's name. "I'm an educator," he said. "You know what an educator is? It's somebody who can run their mouth."

"And knowing you," I said, "you're going to run your mouth as long as you can!"

"Yeah," he said with a laugh. "I'll run my mouth a long time!"

But he has also already made his own funeral plans. And he even hopes that day, whenever it comes, will end with a lengthy funeral procession -- one that slows a lot of people down, with that PT Cruiser in the lead, shouting Tia's story one more time.

"The world would have to stop for me finally and listen or at least learn about me."

Townsend plans to hold a yard sale at his Edmonds home this weekend to raise money for the Tia Foundation and to help pay for his medical treatments. He does not have insurance.

Tia Foundation Fundraiser:

Who: The T.I.A. Foundation, Family and Friends of David Townsend

What: Are holding a Fundraiser/Yard sale.

Where: 9116 228th Street SW, Edmonds, WA 98026 ph: 425-346-8018 ask for Laura Stolk

When: This Saturday & Sunday May 20 & 21

Why: For the medical needs of David Townsend, founder of Traffic Intersection Awareness. David has been diagnosed with GBM brain cancer and much of his medical and living needs are not covered under Medicaid. David Townsend has been unable to obtain medical insurance due to previous medical conditions.

If you can't make it to the fundraiser you can mail a donation to the T.I.A. Foundation c/o David Townsend at 342 NE 167th Shoreline, WA, 98155

Prior Stories

'Don't Let The 5 Minutes You Save Be The Last 5 Minutes Of Someone's Life'

"I Got Justice"