David is a kind man. He and his brother John grew up in the Chicago, Illinois area in the 1950s and ’60s to a working-class family who had immigrant ties to Poland. The family instilled strong academic performance from both boys. David showed promise as writer, and John was something of a math prodigy. From an early age, David learned to be grateful and to show that gratitude for the things he has and the life he leads. He studied at Columbia University and graduated in 1970.

David decided first to teach. He returned to the mid-west after college, landing a teaching gig at a high school in Iowa. He married a woman named Linda, and the pair eventually relocated to New York. There, David got involved in non-profits that targeted at-risk youth. He later became involved in anti-capital punishment groups but also advocated for the victims of violent crimes. Today, David and Linda are both Buddhists and practicing vegetarians.

John chose a different path in life. John went to another Ivy League school–Harvard. He then pursued his math studies at the University of Michigan, completing graduate degrees there including the receiving of a PhD in the late 1960s. Unlike David, John wasn’t great with words. In fact, he was considered to be a “walking brain” according to people who knew him.

By the age of 25, he was a professor at Cal-Berkeley. However, two years later, his lack of social skills had driven him out of teaching. He found himself back home with his parents in suburban Chicago. David tried to reach out to his big brother to see if he could help him learn how to negotiate the ins and outs of being a social person in the world. But John didn’t warm to David’s attempts to reach out. If it didn’t have to do with math, John wasn’t interested. David, being the kind person he is, felt in an odd way that he was the big brother and should be the one to step up to help John in life. But that was not to be.

Finally, John left his parents after staying pretty much in his room at home for two years. He went west, away from people, and isolated himself in the woods. David continued to try to reach out, but John never responded. It was years later that Linda, David’s wife, showed David a letter that had been published in the Washington Post. “This sounds like something your brother would write,” she said. David agreed. He contacted the paper in an effort to try to reach out to John. They referred him to other authorities. And because he then reached out to them, David was able to bring John back from his self-imposed exile in the woods.

And what David brought John to was prison. You see, the letter that Linda showed John in the Post was written by the man the FBI was seeking in connection with a series of bombings across the United States.

Yes, because of the intervention of his brother, Theodore John “Ted” Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was finally captured.