Amy Biehl died a violent death. In 1993, the 26-year-old white Fulbright scholar was registering black voters for South Africa's first free election, when she was dragged out of her car and stabbed and beaten to death by a mob of black Africans spurred by a group intent on the violent overthrow of the apartheid government.

Soon afterward, Amy's parents, Linda and Peter Biehl, quit their jobs and moved from Orange County, California, to South Africa, where they established a foundation in Amy's name. Today, two of her killers work for the foundation. They call Linda Biehl "Makhulu," or grandmother, and she treats them as her sons. "Forgiving is looking at ourselves and saying, 'I don't want to go through life feeling hateful and revengeful, because that's not going to do me any good,'" says Biehl. "We took Amy's lead. We did what we felt she would want."