They wanted to make the world better, and they were killed. What can we learn from their legacy?

I had been following the stories about the life of a young entrepreneur who was killed in Baltimore last week when I heard the shocking news about a Philadelphia reporter killed on Monday.

I didn’t know Pava LaPere, who was found dead at her Baltimore apartment building last week. And while I kept up with his work, I can’t say I knew Josh Kruger very well, either. Kruger, 39, was fatally shot in his Point Breeze home.

And yet, after reading recollections of them both, I was left with the same feeling: a sense of devastating loss. For their loved ones, for those of us who didn’t get an opportunity to know them, and for a world robbed of good people trying to do good when goodness seems far too rare.

By all accounts, LaPere, 26, was a creative and compassionate young woman who loved building camaraderie and community. She founded the tech start-up EcoMap Technologies from her dorm room at Johns Hopkins University to create equitable access to information in marginalized communities. She led with curiosity, inclusivity, and kindness, admirers said. Of all the tributes that poured in, the one that stuck with me was from a colleague who described her as someone “deeply committed to changing the world.”

Tell me this world of ours doesn’t need a major transformation right about now.

We can start with Philadelphia — and that is what Kruger seemed committed to doing, in his life and in his work.

Kruger, who worked for the city for five years before returning to freelance journalism, wasn’t just from Philadelphia. He was of Philadelphia. As a colleague who knew him better recently remarked, so many of the issues that Philadelphia struggles with were some of the very issues that impacted Kruger’s life.

Proudly gay and openly HIV positive, Kruger often spoke and wrote about his experiences with drug addiction and homelessness. Those experiences didn’t just inform his beliefs and writing, they were the foundation of his fierce advocacy for others. He was quick to express his frustration with the city, but just as quick to lean into his faith that Philly could do — and be — better.

But above all, what I saw, even from afar, was someone who tried to be decent, and decency is a lot rarer than one might think. (For proof of that, look no further than our public officials, starting with our former president.)

As I was writing this, I was reminded, too, of Charnice Milton, a 27-year-old journalist who was killed in 2015 in Washington, D.C., after covering a neighborhood meeting for a Capitol Hill paper called the Hill Rag. According to police, Milton was shot in a neighborhood that had seen an increase in homicides that year. Her killing remains unsolved.

What I remember most from all the stories about Milton was her commitment to telling stories from neighborhoods that are routinely ignored by the Washington press corps — a group that mostly keeps its eyes on the same powerful people, doing the same things, that rarely change anything for the better for ordinary people.

Good journalism isn’t always the same as journalism that does good. Same goes for technology, as anyone who pays even the slightest attention to Elon Musk and his soulless stunts can attest.

Kruger got that. When sharing one of the last stories he wrote about the sudden death of Temple University’s acting president JoAnne A. Epps, Kruger said that rather than focus on her many distinguished professional accomplishments, he wanted to focus on one: Why was she loved?

In the end, he said, he got some version of the same answer from everyone he spoke to: She was beloved because she loved us.

It reminds me of that saying: People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Tired as that saying may be, it’s also true. And it should help serve as a reminder that LaPere, Kruger, Epps, Milton, and so many others who have left the world too soon left behind a blueprint for those of us who want to change our corners of the world.

A model of commitment to community, of faith that change — even in our darkest hours — is possible, and that in the end, goodness endures.

What a legacy that is for them to leave, and for each and every one of us to carry forward.