(FORTUNE Small Business) – To the children in the neighborhood, Balbir Singh Sodhi was a nice man. He let them play with their skateboards on the fresh asphalt around his new gas station and convenience store, and he gave them candy. To certain customers who brought him their hard-luck stories, he was an easy mark, good for a tank of gas today in exchange for a promise to pay tomorrow. "I said, 'Why do you do this?' " remembers Harjit, Balbir's younger brother and business partner. "He said, 'Don't worry. If somebody is honest, they will come back.' " To his oldest son, Sukhwinder, he was a hero, a selfless provider with a happy disposition who built a six-bedroom house for his family in India with money he earned in America--a house he never slept in. "He was a good father, and he was a good businessman," says Harjit, summing up. "He was good for everybody." But to the suspect identified as Frank Silva Roque, the qualities that made Balbir human were invisible. All he saw was the turban and the beard.

Saturday, Sept. 15, 2001. Four days after the terrorist attacks on the East Coast. At approximately 2:45 in the afternoon, as Balbir was standing among the flowers and shrubs outside his Chevron station at the corner of 80th Street and University Avenue in Mesa, Ariz., talking to a landscaper, he was shot at least three times in the back. The alleged attacker, who sped off in a black Chevy pickup, tires squealing, was implicated in two other shootings later that day, one involving a Lebanese clerk at a different gas station and the other at a house occupied by an Afghan family. They were lucky. Balbir was not. Lying face up in a slowly spreading pool of blood, he blinked several times, moved his mouth as if trying to speak, then was still. A woman who had been buying gas ran to his side and tried to resuscitate him, but by the time the EMTs arrived, Balbir was dead. He was 52 years old.

That night police arrested Roque at his home. "I'm a patriot!" he shouted while being led away in handcuffs. "I'm an American! Arrest me and let those terrorists run wild?!"

Just to be clear, Balbir was not a terrorist, or even a Muslim. He was a Sikh, as are nearly all the men in this country who sport long beards and wear colorful turbans. (Many devout Sikhs, both men and women, never cut their hair.) Sikhism is a 15th-century outgrowth of Hinduism. Most of its more than 20 million adherents live in northern India, but there is a vibrant diaspora in the U.S.--around half a million people, some of them doctors and engineers but many, like Balbir and his brothers, shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and gas station operators, concentrated in California and the Southwest.

While the details of Balbir's story are his own, the plot is familiar. It traces a classic American arc, some version of which can be found in the pages of so many family histories: the epic immigrant journey across a vast cultural and geographical divide, driven by a powerful hunger for opportunity, fueled by a heroic capacity for work, inspired by faith in the future and hope for the next generation. That arc, drawn and redrawn countless times, has been the main engine of economic growth and prosperity in America from the beginning, as well as the basis for our country's mythical standing in the world as a golden realm of infinite possibilities.

Which makes Balbir's story a potent reminder of who we are and where we came from. More than that, it's an entrepreneurial saga, one that's bound to strike a chord with your own personal tale of risk and reward. After all, Balbir was after many of the same things you are: wealth, comfort, security, a sense of purpose and belonging, a vehicle for controlling his own destiny.

The only difference--and the one that sealed his fate--is that Balbir Singh Sodhi dressed and spoke in such a way that set him apart.

Like most illegal immigrants who arrive from overseas, Balbir probably entered the U.S. on a six-month tourist visa, intending to outstay his welcome. He left behind a wife, five children, and a way of life in the village of Passiawal, in Punjab--a lush region known as the breadbasket of India--that was all he had ever known. He had immediate, practical reasons for doing so: The fabric store in a nearby town that was his family's sole support was failing. Besides, his daughters were nearing an age at which their future health and happiness would be decided in part by the size of their dowries. But more than fleeing hard times, Balbir was escaping what felt like hopelessness.

Years of conflict between Sikh separatists and the Indian army culminated in the 1984 assault on the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar. Hundreds died during a bloody, daylong gun battle that left the temple in ruins, and hundreds more died in the weeks that followed. In the eyes of the government, all Sikh men, easily identifiable then as now by their turbans and beards, were suspected terrorists. Balbir and his brothers feared for their lives. "After 6 P.M., life was shut down because of curfew," says his brother Harjit. "Every day we heard that ten people died here, and five people died there. I finally said, 'This is no place to live.' " In time Balbir reached the same conclusion: His future lay elsewhere.

Balbir first settled with friends and relatives in Los Angeles. He had a two-year technical degree but no easily marketable skills and no green card, and he could barely speak English. So he fell back on what he knew and opened a fabric shop. But the business never took off, and after a couple of years he had to shut it down. Harjit attributes his brother's initial failure to his fractured English and general bafflement at the way things work in America. By Harjit's estimate, his brother lost about $30,000. Thankfully, Balbir could turn to his support network; his brothers helped cover his losses. But it was time, he knew, to try something else.

In 1991, Balbir left Los Angeles for San Francisco, where he would remain throughout the 1990s. He rented a two-bedroom apartment with two other men. He leased a taxi medallion and elected to drive at night, when there was less traffic (and less stress) and potentially more money to be made--as much as $40 more per shift. Harjit describes his brother as a "hard worker" who would routinely drive for as long as 14-hours.

Sukhwinder, who left India in 1997 and joined his father Balbir in San Francisco, remembers how his father would return to the bedroom they shared around 4 A.M., exhausted but not yet ready to sleep. Instead, he prayed.

Balbir's main contact with his wife and children was by telephone. Only twice in 15 years was he able to return to India, and then only for a brief visit. The last time, in 1992, he attended the wedding of his daughter, Satwinder Kaur. It was a match, Sukhwinder says, that would not have been possible without the generous dowry Balbir was able to provide. That was a source of pride--as was Balbir's ability to build a very nice home in India. "He never saw it," notes Sukhwinder. "When I came here, it was under construction, and he asked me what it looked like." Eventually the children made a video for their father. Balbir, Sukhwinder says, "always kept talking how he want to go there and live."

The years Balbir spent behind the wheel of a taxi took a toll on his health. He suffered from chronic pain in his right foot--"because of pushing the pedal all the time," says Harjit. Still, had events not taken a sudden turn for the worse at work, Balbir might never have left San Francisco. What changed, ironically, is that he stopped feeling safe. Beginning in late 1997, there was a spate of murders of San Francisco cab drivers working the late shift. Among the victims was Daljit Singh, a Sikh who was also Balbir's close friend.

"He got so afraid after that," says Harjit. "He said, 'This business is so dangerous. Look how my friend was shot and killed for no reason.' " After that, Harjit says, his brother called all the time, repeating that he didn't want to drive a cab anymore. Harjit encouraged Balbir to join him in Phoenix, where he and his brothers had been living for more than a decade. "I told him, 'Come to the Phoenix area. This a very safe place. We can open a gas station together,' " Harjit recalls. "He said he didn't have enough money." No matter, Harjit assured Balbir. As always, the brothers would be glad to help. "I said, 'Let's go. We can share with you to open the business.'"

Harjit is not the oldest of the Sodhi brothers; that was Balbir. But he is the most ambitious, the most capable, the shrewdest, and hence the one to whom the others look for leadership in all matters concerning the various family enterprises. "I am the first person from my family to come here," he says, sitting at a corner table in his Phoenix restaurant, the Indian Delhi Palace. He has warm brown eyes, framed by a saffron turban, and a long, scraggly beard. It's not yet noon, but already Harjit has put in nearly a full day of work supervising construction at the new Delhi Palace, which will open soon across the street.

Designed by an Indian architect, it's bigger and more elaborate by far than the original restaurant, with ornamental turrets, a grand upstairs banquet hall, and a huge kitchen to handle Harjit's growing catering business. "Look at me," he says with obvious pride, but also by way of complimenting his adopted country. "I'm only in this country 15 or 16 years. I didn't bring with me even pennies! I have a beautiful house, around a half-million dollars. I started the business and followed the system: getting a loan, paying my taxes. I learned it all step by step. First I am on the track, then I start to run." (Not always on the straight and narrow, though. In 1991, Harjit was convicted of trying to bribe an INS officer to obtain work permits for more than 50 friends and relatives. He was fined $50,000 and served 15 months in prison. "That was a bad mistake," he says now, "only one in my life.")

Before settling in Phoenix, Harjit picked grapes with his wife near Fresno, Calif., and worked as a convenience-store clerk in Los Angeles. Later, after he had saved some money, he invested with relatives in an Indian restaurant in Palm Springs, all the while sleeping in crowded, communal apartments and shunning any activity that didn't produce income. "I was always thinking that if I worked every single hour and every single minute, it would bring money to me," Harjit says. "That's the reason I tried to work as many hours I could."

In 1989, Harjit and his two younger brothers, Rana and Jassi, sold their joint stake in the restaurant in Palm Springs and moved to Phoenix. "Palm Springs is not a growing city," Rana explains. "At that time Phoenix was the No. 1 city in the nation." For years afterward, all three brothers, plus their wives and children, as many as 14 people, lived together in a house near the Delhi Palace. "We shared everything," says Rana: "home, cars, business, everything." As opportunities arose, the siblings pooled their money, employed one another's wives and children, and launched new ventures: a discount store, a gas station, an air-conditioning supplier, and real estate.

The new gas station, like everything else the brothers did, was a joint project. But since Balbir was the manager, he chose the location: a corner lot on the eastern edge of Mesa--with plenty of customers living nearby in neat little bungalows with tidy, cactus-filled front yards and the promise of a new mall coming soon to the empty lot across the road. "He said, 'That's a nice neighborhood,' " Harjit remembers. " 'There's not any crime there.' "

The opening was in February 2001, accomplished in part with a $1 million loan from the Small Business Administration and a $300,000 loan from Chevron (obtained by Harjit). Struggling to get his new business off the ground, Balbir routinely put in grueling hours, arriving at 5 A.M. to open, returning at 1 A.M. to close, sneaking a few hours' sleep whenever he could at a small house the brothers owned nearby. Which is how Balbir happened to be at home early that Tuesday morning, listening to the radio, when the news broke. He immediately called Harjit. "He said, 'You know what happened?' " Harjit recalls. "I said, 'No, what happened?' He said, 'Somebody slammed a plane into the towers.' "

The Sodhi brothers were not naive. Like Sikhs all over America, they realized right away the unique danger they were in--because of their superficial resemblance to the terrorists, and especially as small business owners whose jobs put them face to face with the public. Customers they'd dealt with for years looked at them now with either fear or hatred in their eyes, and in at least one case, with concern. Rana, who manages a gas station in Phoenix, says a long time customer warned him, "There's a lot of rumors going on. You guys need to prepare." When Balbir heard that, he insisted that Rana spend Wednesday afternoon with him at his gas station in Mesa. Afterward, Balbir brought Rana back to his house and cooked him a fish dinner.

On Thursday, Rana and Balbir convened an emergency meeting at the Sikh temple with their spiritual leader, Guru Roop Kaur Khalsa, to talk about how to protect themselves. Together they agreed on three measures they could implement right away: a button for merchants to wear, proclaiming I AM A SIKH AMERICAN FROM INDIA; a card to hand out to customers at the cash register with information about Sikhs and what they believe; and an urgent call to the approximately 1,000 Sikhs who live in and around Phoenix, advising them to wrap themselves--literally, if need be--in the American flag. A press conference at the temple was planned for Sunday afternoon, after services, "so that we could explain that we are not affiliated with this attack on our country," says Guru Roop.

On Saturday morning Balbir made a quick run to Costco to pick up supplies. On the way out, he donated $75 to the Red Cross. Then, two hours before he was murdered, Balbir checked in with his son Sukhwinder in San Francisco--a daily ritual now that they were living in different cities. "Every day he called me," Sukhwinder says, smiling. Neither father nor son ever made a move without first consulting the other. On that particular day, Sukhwinder recalls, Balbir returned to a topic he hadn't been able to let go of lately. He told Sukhwinder that he was tired, that he wanted to be at home with his wife on their 25th wedding anniversary, only two months away, and that if he went, maybe this time he would stay. "He wanted me to come and take over the business," says Sukhwinder. "He wanted to go back to India. I was telling him to stay. 'It's okay,' I said. 'I'll come and buy another business, and we will live joined together.' "

Three months later. Outside the Chevron Station on University Ave., piles of flowers mark the spot where Balbir fell. There are also written tributes from around the world. ("We are all one people. Love, peace, unity.") Even a Christian cross. And all those sloppy loans Balbir made? To his brother's surprise, they're being paid off, just as Balbir predicted. Envelopes are still coming in, stuffed with $10, $50, $100--"We've seen so many of those," says Harjit. "People don't leave their names. They just drop the money."

Inside, the steel girders holding up the roof of the store are painted red and blue against a white ceiling, patriotic colors that Balbir chose. Sukhwinder asks his aunt Dharam Pal, Jassi's wife, to take over at the cash register for a moment. He sits in a plastic chair in the dining area, next to the hot dog grill, and closes his eyes for a moment. He has been awake since four this morning, and now the sun's late afternoon rays are slanting through the windows. He has a thick new beard (three months old) and is wearing a baseball cap. Not that he's afraid to wear a turban at work--he's adamant about that. "I believe nothing worse can happen to me now," he says.

Sukhwinder inherited his father's stake in the Chevron station. He and his wife are living with Rana's family. (His younger brother, Phuljeet, has recently come for a visit.) They're expecting their first child in June. He says he doesn't get angry anymore, just sad. And then he hears his father telling him, "It's okay, it will be okay," and takes comfort from that. He tries to emulate his father's gentle spirit. "I'm trying to do what he used to do, like give free candies to children and free ice cream to children, but I know I can't be like him," Sukhwinder says. "Nobody can be him."

The killing of Balbir Singh Sodhi was an international event, widely covered in U.S. newspapers, publicly denounced by President Bush, the Prime Minister of India, and the Secretary-General of the U.N. Thousands attended his memorial service in Phoenix, and thousands more in India joined the procession to the banks of the Sutlej River near the holy temple of Anandpur Sahib, where Balbir's ashes joined those of his ancestors. No doubt all that attention helped some draw a distinction between actual terrorists and people who just look different, and it probably even saved lives. The family thinks so. "He's dead, but his life saved a lot of Sikhs and other people all over the world," says Rana. He believes that was his brother's destiny, a clear sign that Balbir's soul has completed its long journey through the many-million-species cycle of reincarnation that Sikhs believe in, and is reunited now with God. As evidence he quotes the last line of Balbir's diary, translated from Punjabi: "O God, you are my friend. Now the situation is this, that the task you are going to assign me, I am quite ready for it."

After the funeral Balbir's mother tried to persuade her surviving sons to return home. "She said, 'You are not recognized or appreciated in that country,' " Harjit says. "And I told my mother, 'This is not the way the American people are. One guy made a stupid mistake, and 1,000 people came forward feeling sorry. That's America.' " So Harjit is staying. So is Jassi, and so is Rana. They have children who were born here and are U.S. citizens. They'll go to college, or so their parents hope. And afterward maybe life for them will be a little easier. "I want to give my children enough education and let them work only 40 hours a week," says Rana, echoing the hope of generations of immigrant entrepreneurs before him. "I don't think you have to work that hard if you have more education. They'll have a more comfortable life."

Sukhwinder's staying put too. "I want to spend my life here," he says softly. "There are a lot of opportunities in this country."