There are people in this world who see someone in need of help and walk past. Someone else will help, most of us think.

Then there are those who stop. They ask what’s wrong. They take action.

This weekend I came across two stark examples of how good people trying to better the lives of others can have completely different outcomes. The positive ending came last night with a viewing of “The Blind Side” with a much sadder outcome this morning in the form of a Washington Post story.

“The Blind Side” is one of those films that I found incredibly enjoyable despite the fact that I already read the best-selling book by Michael Lewis. If you are not familiar, the story follows Michael Oher, a black teenager in Memphis who ends up at a mostly-white, private Christian school. He has survived some of the most challenging conditions a child in America can face, including never really knowing his father and spending long stretches in foster homes away from his mother.

He is taken in by a white family who gives him the stability and support he needs to achieve academically and athletically, eventually earning a football scholarship to the University of Mississippi. The story is about football, but more than anything it is about human beings–both the Tuohy family and Oher–opening their hearts to one another.

Not surprisingly, you can’t help but feel optimistic about how we can affect one another in positive ways by the time the movie ends.

That’s how I went to sleep.

This morning I opened the Post to read the story of a Maryland State Trooper who was gunned down in the parking lot of an Applebee’s where he had just finished a shift doing security. Police say the killing stems from an argument with a patron who was removed from the restaurant after refusing to pay his bill.

The story describes the trooper as a young man, 24, who had just asked his girlfriend to marry him and who was scheduled to take a group of kids on a trip to New York. In 2007, he founded an organization that mentors teenagers, takes them on trips and brings in professionals to talk to the kids.

Where the Tuohys were able to overcome difficulties in connecting with an initially reticent kid and the stigmas of their community (rich, white side of town vs. poor, black side), this trooper was senselessly yanked from the lives of kids he was trying to help.

We hear about these kinds of negative outcomes too often, but it is heartening to know that there will always be people trying to help out those who need a hand.