A Vietnamese American boy gets in an after-school fight, gets suspended and goes home to kill himself. Chinese American teens agree to talk out their differences at a San Francisco playground, but instead gunshots ring out, leaving six wounded. A Thai citizen convicted of capital murder points to his wretched childhood as a reason why California should not execute him. The state does anyway. Less than three months later, another convicted killer argues he should be spared a death sentence because his childhood in Hong Kong, while privileged, was also abusive.

Such are the headlines that have run within these pages in the past few months—headlines that put the Littleton school shootings in a sordid context. The speculation about why two teenage boys gunned down 13 people before killing themselves last week sounds eerily familiar. The parents paid too little attention to their sons. The parents spoiled them with BMWs. Violent video games are to blame. The Internet is to blame. Guns are to blame. Or maybe the problem is those long coats. Or the kids wearing the long coats. Or the kids teasing the kids wearing the long coats.

Let’s be clear: The blame ultimately rests with none of the above. For all but the very young or very insane, committing a crime should mean committing oneself to the consequences of that crime. Just as the responsibility for the Chinatown shooting (and most other shootings) ultimately rests with the shooters, the blame in the Littleton case points to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who apparently took it upon themselves to gun down 13 people at Columbine High School before taking themselves out. And if other individuals are found to have been deeply involved, our legal system likely will take a dim view of any efforts to shift the blame. Consider Jaturun Siripongs, who this February paid with his life for a double-murder that took place during a robbery 18 years ago: He confessed to the robbery but not the slayings, yet was executed anyway. Or take Charles Ng, whose co-conspirator in a series of torture-slayings fatally poisoned himself after he was caught in 1985. Now, the state of California wants to lethally poison Ng.

All of this is consistent with the axiom that individuals ultimately must take ownership of their actions. Yet we acknowledge, too, that society can move people toward or away from a given path. How it does so is what much of the debate is about—and the answer has little to do with the Internet or Marilyn Manson or trenchcoats. It has everything to do with the rage and dismay over being a scapegoat and the near-universal tendency—sometimes manifested years later—to try to remove that stigma by scapegoating others.

The root cause of not only this slaying, but countless other deaths big and small, comes down to the “in-crowd” mentality—meaning not the specific individuals at Columbine or anywhere else, but the specific idea that certain individuals, largely through genetic serendipity, have at whim the power and the right to make someone’s life wonderful or to make it miserable. Though ludicrous at its face, the concept of the “in-crowd” is one that most of us defend, albeit more and more subconsciously, as we progress from grade school to the workplace, from being kids to having them—and maybe that’s why what happened at Columbine shocked us so much.

Stopping such indecencies as the high school massacre starts with treasuring those among us who think differently. It means being decent to one another, even when doing so is difficult. It is, however, possible, as this story shows:

Years ago, a Vietnamese teenager found herself at a bus stop next to an older, white woman who asked her if she was one of “those people.” When the immigrant nodded, the other woman jumped up, yelling words of hate.

The teenager, having just arrived to the country after abandoning her own homeland, could have socked the woman in the jaw. She could have drummed up a big protest. She could have complained to the police about harassment. Instead, she made it a point to smile at the older woman and to make pleasant small talk when they were both at the bus stop. Eventually, the other woman talked back.

It turned out her son had died in Vietnam. That fact was what the older woman hated—and not the immigrants whom she had stereotyped for years. Thanks to the kindness of one, the cycle of hate against all was finally broken.

Doing so required doing more than what was expected and likely would have been frowned upon by many an “in-crowder,” yet it was well worth it. Decades later, the refurgee who reached out continues to reap rewards: Always a hero not only to her family, she is now that to thousands of schoolchildren in the Bay Area.

That young woman is now a mother to her own teenager, Vickie Nguyen, who told this story as an essay for this year’s “Growing Up Asian in America” contest. Last weekend, the 15-year-old’s essay took first place in the high school category.