As a former athlete, teacher, and current firefighter, Daara Jalili ’17, ’19 M.Ed. has always been committed to protecting, educating, and inspiring those around him. And while he’s done so in a variety of ways, community has always been at the heart of his efforts.
Jalili grew up in Northern California and remembers his first fire drill at school, especially enamored by the big ladder truck. At 15 years old, he approached Tim Walsh — who ran the Tam Crew, a Marin County Fire handcrew specializing in wildfire and fuel work.
“What’s it going to take for me to get there and work for you guys?” he’d asked. Walsh told him to go to school.
Jalili found his way to Notre Dame, where he majored in neuroscience and behavior while also a dedicated athlete on the men’s rowing team. He lived in St. Edward’s Hall and enjoyed the camaraderie of dorm life, but it was his team he was closest to — still in touch with his teammates today.
While firefighting wasn’t his primary focus at Notre Dame, serving the community always was. From a young age, Jalili’s family and educators instilled that sense of duty within him. The question he found himself asking was not if, but how.
That direction came through his teammates on the rowing team. “They were examples of people who were able to academically and athletically push themselves,” he said. “I owe those guys a lot.”
When Jalili was a first-year student, his captain, Matt Rhodes ’14, ’16 M.Ed., introduced him to the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program, a graduate program in education that places teachers in Catholic schools throughout the country.
Jalili was drawn to the program for its intersection of faith and community and, over the next few years, the idea of teaching began to take root in his mind. At the same time, Jalili’s faith was growing as he received his sacraments and grew spiritually through Campus Ministry.
When junior year rolled around, ACE seemed the perfect fit — the nexus between his faith and vocation. After going through the application and interview process, he was placed at Cantwell-Sacred Heart High School in Los Angeles, teaching math and science.
It was during his second year in the program that he met Maria and began dating. While he taught in Los Angeles, Maria was placed as a high school chemistry teacher in Peoria, Illinois. In December of 2023, after seven years together, they got engaged and are set to marry in August 2025.
The community at Cantwell-Sacred Heart High School became deeply meaningful to Jalili, and he remains in contact with his former students. If any of them reached out for help or simply to chat, he would gladly be there for them.
“I loved coming into work every day,” Jalili said. “You could tell the entire faculty had a lot of pride in the school and really cared about the kids.”
While there, Jalili also taught physiology for a time and helped coach cross country and track. He got to know the students and their personalities and thrived by building meaningful relationships.
“There’s a lot of ways to engage with young people. It doesn’t just have to be through content,” he said. “Even just having a trusted adult at school is important.”
Outside of his love for teaching, Jalili also enjoyed living in East LA. He bonded with his ACE community, sharing weekly meals, going to mass, and attending each other's school events, all as part of their weekly routine.
“It really was one of the greatest privileges of my life, working with those kids at that school. ACE was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
Jalili loved his job at the high school and would have stayed longer, but family matters called him back home.
It wasn’t until he grabbed lunch with an old friend who worked for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection that Jalili’s interest in firefighting was called back into his focus. Around the same time, he began noticing “volunteers needed” signs for the local fire department, the idea of joining the fire service still lingering in his mind.
In 2020, he joined the local volunteer fire department and began responding to calls in his community, attending weekly drills to gain basic firefighting and EMS skills.
“After having come back home, I had my family, but most of my buddies had left. So I thought maybe I’d join the fire service and find community again.”
His cousin, a police officer, encouraged him to take the leap and become a firefighter, eventually convincing Jalili to enroll in an academy and begin training.
Every morning, he commuted an hour to be at the drill grounds by 6 a.m. He went to physical training every day and spent hours in the classroom learning hands-on. From January through May of 2021, he stuck to the rigorous training schedule, but being back on a team felt good.
After completing his training at the fire academy and earning his professional firefighter’s license, Jalili was hired on as a seasonal wildland firefighter with Marin County Fire Department’s Tam Fire Crew — the same station he had admired as a kid.
As a seasonal firefighter, Jalili worked four-day shifts with 10-hour days. But during critical fire weather or high fire risk, his hours stretched even longer — sometimes for weeks at a time. His work included vegetation management, cutting fire breaks, and removing brush with a team of 20 other firefighters. When fires broke out, he took part in suppression operations.
Then, an opportunity arose to join Contra Costa County Fire, locally known as CONFIRE, in the Bay Area as a full-time firefighter.
At first, he didn’t think he’d get the job. During his station visit, he drew on everything he’d learned, both at Notre Dame and beyond.
“Whether it’s a consulting interview or a medical school interview, you study for it. Fire is not different,” he said. “I had my leather Notre Dame portfolio with my resumé in it — the ones they sell at the bookstore — and I sat down at Station 5 with the guys.”
After two rounds of interviews and a couple of weeks of waiting, Jalili received the call: he got the job.
CONFIRE is known as an ‘all-risk department,’ handling structural firefighting, emergency medical services, wildland firefighting, technical rescue, and a variety of other duties.
His team grew even larger, with the department housing around 500 safety personnel covering about 800 square miles and 36 stations.
Similar to how he forged meaningful connections with his students as a teacher, Jalili continues to “meet people where they’re at,” as they say in ACE. People call 911 for a variety of reasons and responding to countless calls with varying severity can weigh on a person and lead to burnout.
“With this job, you see people on what might be their worst day,” he said. “We are called to love our brothers and sisters. We are called to care for one another. Last shift — I ran 30 medical calls in two days. They had varying levels of severity and need, but you still have to treat people with compassion and make them feel cared for. It is an emergency to them.”
Faith has helped keep Jalili centered while dealing with tough cases and heavy workloads. He is also grateful for his Notre Dame education and continues to live out the values of faith, community, and service that were instilled in him while he was a student. He hopes students don’t become intimidated by life's twists and turns.
“When I was at Notre Dame, there were a lot of pipelines. Doctor pipeline, consulting pipeline, banking pipeline — but the world is not that linear.”
Sometimes we have to take risks and lean on those closest to us. In doing so, we’re bound to find what we are looking for.
"While I may not be in a field most students or grads would immediately connect with a Notre Dame education, I am very grateful for my degree and formation at Our Lady's University," he said. “The mission statement for Notre Dame states ‘The aim is to create a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good that will bear fruit as learning becomes service to justice.’ Each day I head to work, I hope to live out this call to action and know that my time at ND has enriched my life and brought me closer to living out this ideal."
In recognition of his contributions, Jalili was named as part of the 2022 Domer Dozen cohort, an award presented by the Notre Dame Alumni Association to honor graduates ages 32 and younger for their significant contributions and extraordinary dedication to faith, service, learning, and work.
“At the end of the day, you have what you’re good at and the needs of the world. At some point, they’re going to intersect. And somewhere in there, I’m sure, is passion, dreams, and ambition, and they’ll all intersect too,” Jalili said. “Quiet your mind and figure out what it is you want to do. You probably know what that is, so be honest with yourself.”
