James Slater possessed a rare gift. He was a man people felt they knew within minutes of meeting him. And the words used to describe him are universal - humble, unassuming, and generous.

James, who was 49, moved back to Rochester from North Carolina four years ago to help care for his severely disabled mother. He immersed himself in the community's struggle to improve some of the city's poorest neighborhoods. James worked for Action for a Better Community, and he was on the board of directors for the Rochester Children's Zone. He talked to young people about staying in school and out of trouble. He helped plan neighborhood get-togethers like the Party on the Driving Park Bridge. As a Clean Sweep volunteer, he picked up trash and raked empty lots. James was trying to make a difference.

But on the evening of October 4, James was followed home as he walked down Barons Street to Bernard Street in his Hudson Avenue neighborhood. When he was less than 100 feet from the home he shared with his mother on Bernard, he was brutally gunned down.

It has been reported that James was chased and shot once by two young adults on bikes. Darnell Norton, 18, and Henry Cox, 19, allegedly cleaned James's pants pockets of about $15 in cash, two cell phones, and an iPod. He was then reportedly shot two more times.

"I never once imagined such a thing would happen to Jimmy," says his mother, Lessie Slater. "I never worried about him. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he didn't hang out in bars - he didn't even go to the corner store. There was no reason for me to worry about him."

James's violent death hangs over the community he was trying to help. Now what? How are those around him affected? What becomes of his work and the dreams he had for his community?

A long wooden ramp leads to a side doorway of Lessie Slater's small gray home. Lessie, who suffers from a debilitating form of arthritis and is confined to a wheelchair, needs around-the-clock care. Her granddaughter, Tunisha Bradshaw, was her primary caretaker until James returned to Rochester.

"I never asked Jimmy to come home," Lessie says. "We talked on the phone one day while he was still in North Carolina. He said he wanted to come home to take care of me, and I told him that he would know when the time was right. Then one day I turned around and there he was."

Lessie and James didn't have a typical mother-and-son relationship, she says.

"We were more like good friends," she says. "He would often say things like, ‘It's me and you against the world today.' And sometimes that's just how it felt. I asked him once, I said, ‘Jimmy, why do you do this? Why do you comb my hair, bath me, and help me to the bathroom?' Without even thinking about it, he said, ‘Because I know you would do the same for me.' And he's right. I would have done anything for him."

The community's outrage and strong response to her son's murder was surprising, Lessie says. Mayor Bob Duffy and Police Chief David Moore almost immediately initiated a Zero Tolerance policy toward crime. And in the days following James's death, Lessie learned a lot about the man her son had become. James didn't talk much about the projects he was working on or the people he knew. Lessie says she often felt sorry for him because she thought he didn't have many friends.

"Of course, I knew some of the things he was involved in," she says. "But I had no idea about the multitude of work he was doing besides taking care of me. I couldn't believe it."

James's funeral drew hundreds of people, including neighbors, police officers, representatives of social-service agencies, and city officials. At a ceremony several weeks later, a lilac bush was planted at the Norton Street NET offices in James's memory. It was a cold and rainy afternoon, and Lessie worried about whether the wilted shrub would survive. Mayor Duffy presented her with a large poster-size image of James standing beside two Clean Sweep volunteers. Duffy lifted an opaque protective sheet covering the photo, and it was as if James had come to life. The small gathering huddled in the rain and gazed at the photo, umbrellas and raincoats flapping in the wind.

Through James, Lessie says, she has made a lot of friends. Visitors stop by with packages of cookies and other desserts. What James didn't tell her about his work she has discovered through stories from others. The little bits and pieces she knew of his co-workers have been replaced with faces, handshakes, and pleasant conversations in her living room.

"You can't stop living," Lessie says. "You have to go on. Crying isn't going to bring Jimmy back. I do have a lot of faith. I suppose that comes with age. And a lot of folks come around now, and we talk about Jimmy, and I'm grateful, because they don't have to. But I have a hole in my heart. That's what I'm living with."

News of James Slater's death traveled quickly through the city's community service agencies, waking Karyn Herman at 1 a.m. Herman is the director of Action for a Better Community and worked closely with James. She sat in her small basement office on East Main Street a few weeks after his death, rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hands.

"He was usually the first person in the office," Herman said. "There he would be with that sweet smile of his. I can't tell you how hard it was that first time to come in here and not see him."

Herman met James more than a year ago at a community outreach project organized by Action for a Better Community. Herman had coordinated a house painting and clean-up project for Lessie Slater.

"Mrs. Slater said, ‘Your agency does an awful lot of good things for people, so when are you going to give my son a job?'" said Herman. "He came in the next week, and I knew right away he was perfect for what I needed. He was a natural. I know everybody says stuff like that, but it's true. He had something that made you like him right away."

James worked with neighborhood and community leaders. He organized everything from block parties to home repairs. He got the nonprofit A Horse's Friend to bring horses to the Party on the Driving Park Bridge event, which was a big hit for children in the neighborhood. Many of them had never seen a horse up close. One of the last projects James worked on was raising funds to purchase a large RV-style van to be used as a field office for Action for a Better Community.

"This is not a job where you make a lot of money," Herman said. "And it's not a very glamorous job. It's hard and tiring work. But James understood this instinctively. He was a listener. People immediately trusted him because they sensed that he cared about them. He wanted to help, and that gave them hope."

Herman was putting together a presentation for a social-service agency in Geneva when James was killed. She says the violence that has engulfed the city's northeast and northwest neighborhoods, and was ultimately responsible for James's death, has made her stop and re-evaluate her work and her life.

"I am never behind, but today I feel so behind in everything," she said. "Part of this is because I am asking myself, ‘What for? Why go forward?' ‘Our community is hurting.' But James would not go for that. If he could hear me right now, he would be very disappointed."

Despair, hopelessness, and a sense of isolation, Herman said, permeate most of the northeast and northwest neighborhoods.

"The kind of trouble young people get into today so easily escalates to violence and murder," she said. "A robbery with a gun becomes armed robbery and murder, over what? A few dollars, an iPod - it's gotten this bad? We're in a state of emergency. But James believed we could heal this community. I am reminded of him in so many ways. It's what keeps me going."

The easy access to guns has put parents and their children on a collision course, Herman said. If you're not trying to deter them from using guns, she said, you're protecting them from someone else who has guns.

"And it's the mothers who seem to bearing the worst of this," Herman said. "Mothers are trying to protect their children. Mothers are grieving over the loss of their sons. Look at what this does to families and a community. There's so much loss, we've just got to make something good out of this. That's what James was trying to do, and we can't stop just because he is not here."

Audrey Smith's son, Ricky, went to school with James Slater. Smith co-founded Family and Friends of Murdered Children after Ricky was murdered on Genesee Street in 1990. Losing a child to street violence is different than losing a child to disease or an accident, she says.

"Out of everything I know of, there's no definition, there's no way to explain losing your child to this violence," says Smith. She has met with thousands of mothers and fathers from all over the US who have lost a child, usually through gun violence. She has spoken briefly to Lessie Slater.

"I know what she's going through. You're not whole anymore," Smith says. "Your child was happy and healthy, so you're constantly, even years later, wondering ‘Why did this happen?' We've lost so many young men, women, even babies in Rochester."

Like many people in the community, Smith was outraged by James's murder. She would like to talk to the young men who have been charged with the killing.

"I would like to tell the young people who did this, what happens when you make a choice to take someone's life this way," Smith says. "If they really needed what he had, I imagine Mr. Slater was the kind of guy who would have given it to them. I would ask them, ‘Was it worth his life? Now he has a mother who won't receive his loving care. What you did goes way beyond Mr. Slater. You hurt his family, you hurt your families, you hurt yourselves - and you hurt us all.'"

Lenzy Blake, Solomon Taylor, and James Slater were lifelong friends. Blake and Taylor say they are fed up with the criminal element that has permeated many of the city's northwest neighborhoods. Their first reaction to James's murder was anger. Then Blake and Taylor say they were inspired to take action.

"A group of us were James's pallbearers and we decided something had to be done," says Blake. "I had such dark and vengeful thoughts over what had happened to him and to so many others. Then I remembered that little smile of James's and I knew that's not how he would want to inspire us. So a group of us make a commitment to get up off our butts and do something positive to stop this."

Blake and Taylor say they support the mayor and Police Chief Moore, but the police can't handle the problem of inner-city violence alone. They need the help of the whole community. Blake and Taylor organized an activist group called Slater's Raiders, which marched every day for 20 days after James's death to honor his memory and to increase community involvement.

"We want people to stand up and say, ‘We're not going to allow this criminal element to go through our community unabated anymore,'" Blake says.

Too many people are either fearful of getting involved in their own neighborhoods or claim they are too busy, he says.

Slater's Raiders, Blake says, is about more than taking back the community. It's about restoring dignity and pride.

"We want to send a message," he says. "We're job holders, we're fathers, we're brothers, we're husbands, we're taxpayers, and we abide by the law. And we're here. This is our community. Why should we be the ones to leave? Make the criminal element go away, make them find another place. We're not going to let them rob us of our peace. That's what James would want."

Latasha Shaw's story can be found here.