The night before Brooke Jackman was killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, she told her mom about some of her dreams for the future.

The recent Columbia University graduate had just turned 23 and was only two months into a new job on the agency desk at Cantor Fitzgerald. She’d decided she wanted to go back to school to get her master’s degree in social work.

“She looked to help people from the time she was a little girl,” Erin Jackman, Brooke’s older sister, tells PEOPLE.

Brooke volunteered throughout her childhood, Erin says: in a soup kitchen, with people with disabilities.

“She was just that person.” Erin says, “She was just born with this moral compass where she did the right thing.”

Brooke Jackman.The Jackman Family
Born and raised in Oyster Bay on Long Island, Brooke, the baby of the family and younger than Erin by six years, always had her nose buried in a book.

“She always had them with her. Always,” Erin recalls. “When we were little, my brother Ross and I used to almost be embarrassed how she took her books with her on the bus, to sleepovers, to parties.”

“But she was cool,” Erin adds of her sister. “She had so many friends.” And despite a photographic memory, “she wasn’t impressed by her own smarts.”

Brooke Jackman in college (left) and as a girl on Long Island, N.Y.The Jackman Family
Erin says simply: “She was the best out of all of us.”

Brooke graduated from Columbia with a major in women’s studies and a minor in Italian but got the job at Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial firm, before going to graduate school.

She started on July 1, 2001.

Brooke Jackman as a young girl (center) with her parents.Courtesy of the Jackman Family
In the chaotic aftermath of two planes hitting in the World Trade Center, Erin, who was working as a second-grade teacher at P.S. 11 in Midtown, and her family initially believed Brooke was safe.

Erin and her brother went to dad Bob’s office in Midtown and got word that Brooke was with other people at Cantor Fitzgerald, which was on the 104th floor of the north tower, and they were going to make their way down.

The family did everything they could to get close to the site, stopping at each hospital along the way, still believing Brooke was potentially okay. “We thought she just needed us,” Erin says. “We thought she got out.”

“We didn’t know then that there was no way down,” Erin says. “Or a way up.”

From left: Brooke Jackman with brother Ross and sister Erin in 2001.The Jackman Family
Erin recalls standing outside St. Vincent with all the doctors and nurses, waiting for ambulances full of survivors to be treated — ambulances that, she says, “never came.”

Twenty four years later, Erin says the heartbreak and anguish of losing Brooke is as raw as it ever was.

“It’s a difficult time of year,” she says, wiping away tears. “But you go on, one foot in front of the other, because what other choice is there?”

In the months following the attack, the Jackman family knew they couldn’t let Brooke’s bright life just be snuffed out.

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Because Brooke had planned to go into service, her family launched the Brooke Jackman Foundation a few months after Sept. 11, dedicated to helping kids in underserved communities.

‘We lost her, but we couldn’t let her dreams die,” Erin says.

That first year, the foundation provided 100 “Brooke Packs” full of school supplies and brand new books to kids who needed them.

Since then, the group has grown to include a variety of programs designed to help kids succeed in school, including book giveaways, literacy programs and even cooking classes.

A book giveaway through the Brooke Jackman Foundation.The Jackman Family
“We met families who said they weren’t sure how to help their children with their school work, so we also started the Brooke Jackman family literacy program. It was a way to provide caregivers with a way to help their children succeed in school, to teach them how to live these literate lives,” Erin says.

Those efforts include “getting library cards, field trips, author visits, cooking, art projects, ways to incorporate literacy and making it fun in their everyday lives,” Erin says.

Brooke Jackman Foundation “Brooke Packs”.Courtesy of the Jackman Family
Since its inception, the foundation has given more than a million books to kids in the tri-state area and more than 100,000 backpacks.

“We don’t know how her life would have turned out, but we’ve kept her name alive,” Erin says. “We’ve kept her memory alive. We’ve helped children in her name.”

In a way, that’s helped Brooke’s loved ones too.

“I’ve had families that have gone through our programs that have said that a piece of Brooke lives on in every child that walks through our doors. And I believe that,” Erin says. “Because we are spreading her love of reading, and teaching them that reading is fun. It’s cool.”

Kids with books courtesy of the Brooke Jackman Foundation.Courtesy of the Jackman Family
Erin says her little sister is never far from mind. How could she be?

“Not one single day has passed when she hasn’t been with me in my heart, in my head. Her voice, her laugh, I cherish every single minute of our 23 years together, every single day,” she says.

Through the family foundation, Erin has found some peace, even joy, in helping others.

“I hope in some way,” she says, “my sister knows what we do in her name and is happy and proud.”

To learn more about the Brooke Jackman foundation or donate, visit https://brookejackmanfoundation.org/