Early Life
Daniel James White was born in Long Beach, California, the second of nine children. He was raised by working class parents in a Roman Catholic household in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. He attended Riordan High School until he was expelled in his junior year. He went on to attend Woodrow Wilson High School where he was valedictorian of his class.
White enlisted in the United States Army in June 1965. He was a sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division in the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1970 and was honorably discharged in 1971.
White worked as a security guard at A. J. Dimond High School in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1972. He returned to San Francisco to work as a police officer. According to a San Francisco Weekly newspaper account, citing no sources but based largely on interviews with two former political allies of White, he quit the force after reporting another officer for beating a handcuffed suspect.
White then joined the San Francisco Fire Department. While on duty, according to the San Francisco Weekly story, White's rescue of a woman and her baby from a seventh-floor apartment in the Geneva Towers was covered by The San Francisco Chronicle. The city's newspapers referred to him as "an all-American boy."
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