![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/david-halimi-1.jpg\")
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David Halimi in Diamond W Western Wear, the store he runs in Chico, California. Photo by Benyamin Cohen<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t![\"Benyamin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Cohen-24-new-300x200.jpg\")
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Benyamin Cohen<\/a> David Halimi grew up Jewish in Tehran, watching Bonanza. He now produces rodeos in Northern California and owns a bar modeled on Cheers.<\/p>\n At 73, Halimi is known around Chico as the man behind a Western wear store stocked with thousands of cowboy boots, a rodeo circuit that draws bull riders from across the region, and a U-shaped bar where locals joke about who might be the town\u2019s version of Norm. Less obvious \u2014 but no less central \u2014 is that he is also a longtime synagogue president, a Hillel board leader, and a professor who teaches business analytics at the local university.<\/p>\n Asked how an Iranian Jew learned the rhythms of the American West, Halimi doesn\u2019t mystify it. \u201cI\u2019m a quick learner,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Halimi still follows events in Iran closely. \u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s my heritage.\u201d He has no illusions about the imbalance of power. \u201cPeople protesting with their bare hands are no match to machine guns and professional assassins.\u201d Still, he allows himself hope. \u201cI wish and I pray that the people will prevail.\u201d<\/p>\n For Halimi, the distance between Iran and Chico is not just geographic. It is the distance between a life shaped by instability \u2014 he grew up in Iran in the aftermath of a coup \u2014 and one he has spent decades deliberately building.<\/p>\n On a recent afternoon inside the 6,000-square-foot Diamond W Western Wear, Halimi wore what he sells \u2014 black alligator boots, jeans, a button-down, blazer and a hat \u2014 and moved easily past towers of boots, glass cases of belt buckles, pausing as an employee steamed a cowboy hat back into shape. His wife, Fran, emerged from the back. Customers drifted in.<\/p>\n Over the years, his footprint downtown has expanded to include two restaurants and a soon-to-open coffee shop, all within walking distance of his store.<\/p>\n Halimi didn\u2019t arrive in America looking for a job. He arrived looking for an opportunity. When he moved to the United States at 16, in 1969, he worked full time while going to school, bussing tables at a restaurant and saving aggressively. By 18, he had pooled his earnings with his older brother to make his first real estate investment. \u201cI was never looking for a job,\u201d he said. \u201cI always wanted to do my own thing.\u201d<\/p>\n That instinct carried him through college, where he studied mathematics and economics, and later into commodities trading \u2014 \u201cthe stock market on steroids,\u201d as he put it \u2014 before settling in Chico in 1979. It had the virtues he was looking for: a small-town feel, a university\u2019s energy, and room to build.<\/p>\n Mending fences, building community<\/p>\n For all the boots, buckles and bull riders, Halimi\u2019s most consequential work happens closer to home. He has served on the board of Congregation Beth Israel of Chico for decades, including numerous stints as president, and has been a steady presence through the cycles that define small Jewish communities.<\/p>\n Rabbi Lisa Rappaport, who leads the congregation, said that constancy matters. In a community with limited resources, leadership often means stepping in wherever the need arises.<\/p>\n That was especially true after the synagogue was targeted with antisemitic graffiti in late 2022. What followed, Rappaport recalled, was an outpouring of support. Donations funded a new security system. A local metalworker volunteered to create a new sign. Another family, moved by the response, offered to pay for a fence.<\/p>\n Halimi volunteered to design and help build it. Vertical bars, he insisted, would make the synagogue feel like a jail. Instead, he created diagonal metal panels inspired by math\u2019s golden ratio, incorporating stainless-steel symbols of the Twelve Tribes \u2014 a boundary meant to protect without closing the place off.<\/p>\n Rappaport credits both Halimi and his wife, a former religious school director and longtime sisterhood leader, with helping sustain the shul. \u201cThey\u2019re in it till the end,\u201d she said. In a small community, she added, that kind of commitment is existential. \u201cIf you have a couple of people who have that frame of mind,\u201d she said, \u201cit keeps the community alive. It\u2019s people like that that keep it pulsing.\u201d<\/p>\n Halimi, now a grandfather, carries that same lesson into his classroom at Chico State, where he has been teaching since 2009. Each semester he leads two courses: business analytics and the evolution of management theory. He doesn\u2019t think of it as a job so much as a responsibility. \u201cI like seeing the light bulb go on,\u201d he said. Former students, now entrepreneurs themselves, sometimes track him down to say thank you. The payoff, he said, is \u201cpsychic income.\u201d<\/p>\n Halimi teaches what he learned: \u201cEven when the odds are against you,\u201d he said, \u201cyou can still succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n His rodeo business began, improbably enough, as a marketing complaint. Halimi had been sponsoring country concerts and rodeos to promote the store, but he was unimpressed with the results. Other sponsors, he noticed, felt the same way. So he launched his own production company. First, they hosted country music concerts. Soon, they built a rodeo: the National Bullriding Championship Tour<\/a>, which just marked its 30th year.<\/p>\n He had expected resistance from the industry. Instead, he found acceptance, and eventually respect. \u201cIt\u2019s very unusual,\u201d he acknowledged, \u201cfor an Iranian Jew to be a successful rodeo producer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Halimi in Diamond W Western Wear, the store he runs in Chico, California. 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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJanuary 21, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_2327-scaled.jpg\")
David Halimi outside his Western wear store in Chico, California. Photo by Benyamin Cohen<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/fencechico.jpg\")
The fence at Congregation Beth Israel of Chico was designed by David Halimi. Photo by Benyamin Cohen<\/p>\n