For Matt Rubio’s family, life goes on. But life isn’t what it was, not without the man his mother calls a “gentle giant.”

Since 20-year-old Rubio was killed by a drunken driver in 2004, his family has moved from Arlington to a smaller house near Lake Stevens.

His cousin, Ryan Tucker, who was in Rubio’s car when a woman driving on the wrong side of Highway 9 smashed into them, is now on Navy duty in Japan.

His parents, Tony and Tiffeny Rubio, are still paying for their son’s funeral. His sisters, Chelsea, 9, and Katy, 7, long for their big brother, the best baby-sitter they ever had.

If her son had lived, Tiffeny Rubio said, “I think he would have worked with kids. He was a gentle giant.”

Matt Rubio played football as an eighth-grader at Cedarcrest School in Marysville. He was killed at age 20 by a drunken driver in 2004.

Life goes on, but it’s not the same. One thing, though, is the same. Even in death, Matt Rubio makes a difference for his favorite charity, Christmas House.

On Saturday, his parents will host their second annual pizza party to mark what would have been his 22nd birthday. Matt Rubio was a volunteer at Christmas House, an Everett-based organization that provides holiday gifts to needy families. The event will be at 6 p.m. at Alfy’s Pizza in Lake Stevens.

Friends, relatives and strangers who would like to help in Matt Rubio’s memory are asked to bring new toys or coats. A year ago, the family hosted a similar event in Arlington.

Pam Sorenson, a member of the Christmas House board of directors, said that event made a substantial contribution in 2004. “It filled a pickup truck. There were even a couple of bikes,” she said.

Already this year, Sorenson said, a donor has sent $200 in honor of Matt Rubio, a 6-foot, 400-pound man who had attended Weston High School in Arlington.

The gift drive comes just in time. Christmas House volunteers will move into the charity’s site, the Everett Boys and Girls Club gym, on Saturday and Sunday. They’ll start serving the public Dec. 2. To shop there, Sorenson said, families must live in Snohomish County, have custody of children for whom they are getting gifts, and have a low income.

“We’re expecting about 2,800 families with about 8,000 children,” Sorenson said. “Toys are our number one thing. Kids would like a new coat, but they’d love a Barbie doll.”

Sorenson remembers Matt Rubio volunteering. “He was a big teddy bear. A lot of people volunteer, but his heart was really in it,” she said.

Tony and Tiffeny Rubio said their family was helped by the charity years ago.

“That’s how they found out about Christmas House,” Sorenson said. “Maybe one year you need it, and the next year you’re on your feet again and can volunteer. That’s how it was with the Rubios.”

Sorenson said the Rubios’ extended family is so large that last year they “pretty much staffed one whole shift in Matt’s memory.”

The Rubios are grateful their son’s goodness lives on, but they remain angry at Shenequay Young, the Lynnwood woman who caused Matt’s death, and at what they see as too-lenient penalties for drunken drivers.

In February, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Stephen Dwyer sentenced Young, 23 at the time, to the maximum term of 31/2 years in prison. Dwyer said Young had driven in the wrong lane for miles, that she was driving without insurance and that her blood-alcohol level tested at more than twice the legal limit after the Aug. 29, 2004, crash.

Tony Rubio took his plea for longer sentences to state lawmakers last winter. He has every intention of bringing the issue back to Olympia in the next legislative session.

“I see it every night, people who have been drinking and are driving over the line,” Rubio said. He works a late shift at a window company in Bothell and drives home after midnight.

“You get a phone call like the one we got, people should be punished. There’s no excuse for any of it,” Tony Rubio said. He favors seven-year sentences for drunken drivers who kill others. “Make it to where people don’t want to do it,” he said.

The couple also are incensed that Young qualified for a program allowing her to have her infant daughter, Patience, with her at the Washington State Corrections Center for Women in Purdy.

“She gets to keep her baby, and my kid is dead,” Tony Rubio said. “I’m only 40, and he would have been 22 this year. He was our buddy.”

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein julie@heraldnet.com.