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Remembering
Monica L. Zajanc
USDA Forest Service, Payette National Forest — Idaho
Classification: Career
Rank: Firefighter
Date of Death: August 13, 2006
Age: 27
Monica Lee Zajanc was born on
November 2, 1978, in Pocatello,
Idaho. She grew up learning to love
the outdoors and enjoyed skiing,
rafting, rock climbing,
and camping. Monica had
an endless energy, always
pushing herself to try
something new.
Monica was 20 when
she followed her father,
Larry, and her older
brother, Daniel, into the
Forest Service fire organization
in 1999. She began
on the Boise National
Forest in Garden Valley,
Idaho, on an engine crew.
She moved to Lowman,
Idaho, in 2001 to work on a
seven-person engine module.
In 2003, Monica worked for the
Cascade Ranger district on a sixperson
hand crew. In the off seasons,
Monica attended Boise State University,
working toward a degree in psychology. In
2004, she moved to Payette National Forest as a
helicopter crewmember on the Krassel Helitak
operation. It was here that she found her home. She
loved the “family” that she had found in the
wildland firefighting organization.
On July 18, 2006, she was one of
the ten firefighters that survived
the entrapment on the Little
Venus fire on the Shoshone
National Forest. The events
of that day left her shaken,
but determined to return
to what she loved. Just
a few weeks later, on
Sunday, August 13, 2006,
Monica completed her
last assignment with the
Forest Service when the
helicopter she and three
other coworkers were in
crashed on the Krassel
Ranger District on the
Payette National Forest.
She will always be remembered
as smart and beautiful and strong.
She was doing what she loved, in a
place she loved, with people she loved,
and she left us with memories of her smile,
her laughter, and her love of life. Those memories
still hang in the air like they were yesterday and will
be with us forever.
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really
stop to look fear in the face… You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
— Eleanor Roosevelt