ALUNI PROFILE — Jan./Feb. 2007

On Daly watch

Patrick Daly

As an FBI agent, Patrick Daly tracked terrorists and dismantled bombs. Now he’s protecting the safety of millions riding the CTA

By Rachel Parker

Still glowing from their wedding day, Katherine and Patrick Daly ’75 LAS stepped off the plane in Puerto Rico and talked excitedly about how they would spend their honeymoon on the island. Then five days later, Patrick got a call informing him that a terrorist group had fired a rocket through an FBI office in Puerto Rico. Patrick, an FBI special agent, reported that evening to the island’s FBI office to assist in the investigation. “I told my wife we were going to have a Caribbean honeymoon, but I didn’t tell her how long it would be,” Daly says. “It ended up being five years.”

However, that’s the kind of unexpected situation Daly came to expect during his 21-year career with the FBI, as assignments led him to places as far away as the Middle East and Africa and into environments as dangerous as the post-blast site of the Oklahoma City bombing. In between dismantling bombs, negotiating with hostage takers and working undercover as a drug dealer, Daly helped investigate the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1994, managed the crime scene of Avianca Airlines Flight 203 bombing in 1989 and organized Chicago’s response to the 9/11 attacks.

“I never viewed it as a job”

Today, as chief security officer for the Chicago Transit Authority, Daly’s day-to-day routine is more predictable, though his job is no less weighty. Accountable for the safety and security of CTA facilities, personnel and passengers, he monitors potential terrorist threats, determines where to implement security measures, and teams with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to conduct threat and vulnerability assessments of the CTA.

It’s a far cry from the priesthood, an occupation that Daly considered as a student at Quigley South, a Catholic high school on Chicago’s South Side. After taking a few criminal justice courses at UIC on a whim, he shifted his career focus to law enforcement. His professors, he says—naming off half a dozen or so—made a marked impact on him, despite the fact that he was somewhat detached from the University. For along with commuting to school (on the CTA, no less) from his home at 87th and Harper, he spent more hours (30 per week) working in a warehouse than he did attending classes.

After graduating and teaching English in Barcelona, Spain, Daly flew home and applied to become a police officer in several Chicago suburbs. He received offers from the Downers Grove, Deerfield and Oak Park police departments at virtually the same time, but joined the Oak Park force because “living on the South Side, I knew how to get to Oak Park, but I didn’t know how to get to Deerfield,” he says, laughing. Five years later, he found himself in a similar situation when the FBI, CIA and Secret Service all asked him to come on board.

He doesn’t regret choosing the FBI, believing that his work there served the greater good. “I never viewed it as a job,” he insists. “I viewed it as an opportunity.”

As the CTA’s chief security officer, Daly keeps an eye out for potential terrorist threats and enforces security measures on the bus and rail system. He joined the CTA in 2004 after 21 years with the FBI.