Ben Goldman updated his Facebook page that Monday night, writing that he was having a great time in downtown Detroit "... yes, that was Ben, his family said, always able to squeeze joy from everything he did, even a 24-hour business trip to the gritty Midwest metropolis. And then the 42-year-old Los Gatos family man and up-and-coming Silicon Valley executive just disappeared.

Detroit police found his body the next day, Aug. 19. He had been shot to death, left in a vacant lot after apparently spending time at the Penthouse Club. It took them a few days to identify him. He had no wallet, no photographs of his wife and two young daughters, no Cisco ID badge, nothing to connect him to Silicon Valley.

Benjamin Goldman, 42, was the victim of an unsolved homicide in a high-crime area known there as 8 Mile. Detroit police are investigating Goldman's killing.

But at Cisco Systems and at Temple Shir Hadash and at his Los Gatos home during his family's shiva, they remembered Goldman this week as a man very much full of life and family and song. He had become very successful as Silicon Valley techie, but also never lost his trademark childlike wonder. He mastered origami as a young teen and still left tips at restaurants with the bills folded in the shape of an elephant.