Ryan was known for hands-on investigations. He had previously gone undercover as a teacher in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles and spent time in a Newfoundland fishing village to understand resource disputes. When constituents reported that their family members were being held against their will in Jim Jones's Peoples Temple compound in Guyana, Ryan decided to go see for himself. The delegation that traveled to Jonestown included journalists, congressional aides, and concerned relatives. What they found confirmed the worst reports.

As Ryan and his party attempted to depart from the airstrip at Port Kaituma with several Jonestown defectors, gunmen sent by Jim Jones opened fire on the group. Ryan, three journalists, and a defector were killed; eleven others were wounded. Hours later, Jones ordered the mass murder-suicide that killed over 900 people at Jonestown -- the single largest deliberate loss of American civilian life before September 11, 2001.

The park in Foster City that bears Ryan's name is a recreational facility -- sports fields, playgrounds, walking paths -- serving a planned suburban community. The name is easy to overlook if you do not know the story behind it. But for those who do, the park is a quiet memorial to a congressman who believed that representing his constituents sometimes meant putting himself in danger.