‘We Know Grace Is Going To Take Care Of Us From Above': Young Journalist's Family

CHICAGO — An online fundraiser has been created for family of a young woman who died in a train accident last month.

Grace Bentkowski, 22, was just nine months into her journalism career after landing a job as a creative producer at NewsNation when she was struck and killed by a South Shore commuter train on July 27. Grace got off work early and walked to Millennium Station as she had done every day of her job and internship last summer for her commute back to Dyer, IN, news reports said.

Bentkowski was walking across the train tracks at the Hegewisch and Hammond stations to get to the parking lot, when she was struck by another train leaving the platform. Her parents knew something was wrong when they checked the GPS location on her phone and noticed it was headed toward to the University of Chicago Medical Center, according to WGN.

>>> Celebrate Grace Bentkowski's Life and Legacy

After several hours of waiting, her mom and dad, Erin (O’Neill) and Phil Bentkowski, and her brother, Adian, learned that Grace didn’t make it.

“I wish this was all a dream and I could just wake up and hold my sister one more time,” her brother wrote.

Bentkowski knew from a young age that she wanted to be a journalist and excelled in the journalism program at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. She became news director of NewsLink Indiana, which is an award-winning college station run by BSU students.

At the time of her death, Bentkowski was settling into her new professional career and looking for apartments in Chicago.

“Grace touched many people's lives at the young age of 22. She was a striving journalist and the hardest worker there is .. I wish we could've had her here longer,” Adian wrote. “Although we lost such a beautiful and caring soul, she is now with all of us.”

Now, her devastated parents and brother are faced with the task of getting through the rest of their lives without their daughter and sister. A GoFundMe has been established – Celebrate Grace Bentkowski's Life and Legacy – to help pay for medical costs, cremation and a celebration of life, “which is what Grace would have wanted.”

“As her brother, this is tough on me, losing my best friend, but to my parents, this is so much harder. My mom, Erin O'neill Bentkowski, and my father, Phil Bentkowski, lost their precious baby girl,” her brother said. “Getting through this is going to be hard but we know Grace is going to take care of us from above.”