Stanford’s Aradshar Chaddar Dreamed Big — and Left a Lasting Impact

Aradshar Chaddar spent his life chasing big dreams — from debate halls and stages in Lahore to Stanford University.

This spring, at 21, the Stanford sophomore was killed in a bike collision on campus, a death that stunned friends and family across two continents and cut short a life defined by ambition.

His death — the first bike fatality on Stanford’s campus in nearly six years — rattled those who knew him as more than an accomplished student. To loved ones, Chaddar was someone who lifted up the people around him, carried the hopes of his family in Pakistan, and made others believe in the magnitude of their own dreams.

“This is the gravest blow,” his father, Sessions Judge Zafaryab Chaddar, said to KQED from Pakistan. “I would have gone to a grave before Aradshar, but life is very cruel.”

“He was so smart, he was so beautiful.”

Chaddar’s determination showed early. At 7, he was one of the top students in his school’s debate competitions. The topics for first graders were simple, but his peers could tell he was something special. Born in the United States and raised in Pakistan, he quickly stood out among his classmates.

“He was way ahead of everyone else around him,” said Ismail Iftikhar, his classmate and friend.

At 13, Chaddar, known as Arad or Chad to friends and family, began going to Model United Nations conferences, where he came alive during long, winding speeches about world affairs.

“You could tell that beneath the words, there were larger dreams and visions of a world that’s better,” said Mustafa Khan, who attended the same high school as Chaddar.

At 18, he shot up to 6-foot-3 — a college student with glasses, neat dark hair, a wide smile and a glimmer in his eyes as he would rope his friend Léon Garcia to help him run the Stanford Democrats or into a last-minute trek to San Francisco’s Chinatown.

“He would go out of his way to talk to people on the street whom he ran into, who he thought he could learn something interesting from,” Garcia said.

At 21, Chaddar ran into his high school history teacher, Shaan Tahir, in Lahore, Pakistan. His teacher asked him: “Arad. Ambitious as ever?”

“Sir. Is there any other way?” Chaddar said.

“What are you aiming for?”

“President of the USA,” he confidently responded.

Tahir laughed, then remembered who he was talking to.

“I don’t doubt it,” he said to his former student.

Months later, at a memorial service at the high school, Tahir recalled the memory as he sat among a crowd wracked with grief.

“I knew that he meant it … He is possibly the most ambitious person that I’ve ever met in my life,” Tahir told KQED. “Extremely determined to be someone in life and be something in life.”

Chaddar’s story is “about dreaming,” Khan said. “Not just for yourself, but dreaming for other people. Recognizing other people’s dreams and making them feel like they’re capable of achieving them because they are.”

Chasing big dreams

Iftikhar was 7 when he met Chaddar, and the first impression was not positive.

“I thought he was full of himself,” Iftikhar said, laughing. “I thought he was incredibly selfish.”

But even then, he could tell Chaddar was ambitious and smart. They were among the top students at their school in Lahore, a city of over 14 million people and Pakistan’s academic center. Their friendly rivalry persisted until eighth grade, when Chaddar asked Iftikhar to join his Model United Nations team.

Iftikhar agreed.

“I realized that selfish is the last word I would use for him,” Iftikhar said.

It was the type of friendship only two high achievers could have, one that endlessly pushed each other. They were prefects together and ran the Model UN club together. They poured over films together, diving into dialogue, politics and themes.

“I couldn’t name a single thing he hadn’t seen,” he said. “There was basically nothing I could beat him in.”

Chaddar’s favorite directors were Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa. He devoured books. While it’s common for Americans to be fans of the 2015 biographical musical Hamilton, it’s less common for a kid from Pakistan — and Iftikhar said that Chaddar knew the dialogue by heart. He commanded English and Urdu with ease. He had a course load that confounded teachers. He brought home awards and distinctions.

Vulnerability was hard for Chaddar, who felt deeply for the people around him, as if there was no separation between someone’s sorrow and his own. Their happiness was his.

Sometimes the emotions got to him. In high school, Iftikhar and Chaddar’s team lost a Model UN competition. Chaddar was “a really bad loser, because he wasn’t used to losing,” Iftikhar said.

At home, after the rest of the team left, Iftikhar found Chaddar lying down on the couch. He was clearly distressed, almost on the verge of tears. Iftikhar walked over and hugged him. Chaddar cried.

“Later on, he told me that that was like his favorite memory of us,” Iftikhar, now 21 and living in Southern California, said. “It just holds a special place in my heart.”

It felt natural that they would be the only two of their class to go to California for college — Iftikhar to Claremont McKenna College near Los Angeles, Chaddar to Stanford in the Bay Area.

A life cut short

Chaddar arrived at Stanford in fall 2023 on a scholarship, planning to study political science and international relations. He tried to convince Garcia, a fellow freshman, to drop physics and pursue the same path.

“He was a big evangelist for the humanities,” Garcia said. “He believed that it was his job to lift up the people around him.”

If Chaddar’s goal was to be president, spending time with him felt like being on the campaign trail. To Garcia, he was a “Don Quixote-style character.” When he wasn’t studying, Chaddar was pushing Garcia to leave the Stanford bubble and venture into San Francisco, where Chaddar knew people and places as if he lived in the city.

“He kind of lived life in his own world, almost, and he brought everybody around him into that world,” Garcia said. “He was like one of the last true romantics.”

He would spontaneously pop up at the San Francisco apartment of Khan, who graduated from Stanford.

“His energy is quite infectious as well. Always having this cheeky grin on his face,” Khan said. “It was hard not to fall in love with.”

It was hard to imagine someone so full of life being gone.

On May 31, Chaddar was riding an electric bike on the Stanford University campus when, around 3 a.m., he was struck by a car. He was taken to a hospital, where he died at 3:25 a.m.

He had been crossing the intersection of Palm Drive and Arboretum Road in the dark, with limited visibility, when an Uber driver entered the intersection and hit him on his left side.

When a collision on campus results in an injury, CHP responds for an investigation and a report, said Bill Larson, public information officer for Stanford’s Department of Public Safety.

Stanford data shows that from December 2018 to November 2025, there were 120 bike collisions on campus that resulted in a CHP investigation. Around 60% of those collisions were between a bike and a vehicle that resulted in an injury.

When expanding the dataset beyond collisions resulting in a CHP investigation, there have been almost 240 bike accidents on campus reported from September 2018 to October 2025. According to the Stanford Daily, some spots on campus have a kind of notoriety for being dangerous for cyclists. For example, the roundabout near the school’s Clock Tower is called the “Circle of Death.”

“A lot of the roads at Stanford are not very well lit,” Khan said. “I am so afraid every time I drive through.”

Iftikhar said around the time of the collision, speculation arose about what happened. It made sense that people were searching for more answers, he said, trying to understand the sudden death of someone so loved. But he wasn’t sure there was more to know.

Iftikhar learned about Chaddar at 7:20 a.m. on June 2, 2025, after getting a message from Chaddar’s mother. Iftikhar was working on the Claremont McKenna College campus that summer and was the closest of his friends to the Bay Area. He booked a flight the same day.

Chaddar’s aunt from North Carolina also arrived. What followed was a succession of office visits. They went to the medical examiner’s office. They couldn’t see the body right away because the investigation was still ongoing. So they went to a funeral home and talked to the coroner. They signed documents and packed his dorm room. They attended a hastily organized vigil on campus, joining more than 200 students, staff and faculty as stories were shared and music played. Even more watched online.

A courier company predicted it would take at least weeks to bring Chaddar home to Pakistan, citing logistics. Iftikhar worked with Chaddar’s aunt to expedite the process — filling out documents, contacting the U.S. State Department and the Pakistani embassy. In early June, Chaddar was able to be transported back to Pakistan.

“I just was very restless,” he said. “I don’t know. I just ended up doing things, and that’s my way of dealing with things.”

The boys went to California together. Now they were going home together.

A life remembered

While he went to school in Lahore, Chaddar’s family was from Mano Chak, a village three hours away.

Chaddar was buried there, near his younger sister, who died a few years earlier. At the service, Iftikhar said he saw “more people than I’ve ever seen” in the village — all gathered for him. Friends from Stanford, including his girlfriend, also flew from California to see him.

He is survived by his father, mother and his 12-year-old sister.

“He was such a friendly baby,” his mother, gynecologist Sadia Chaddar, said. He had a sweet disposition and happily chirped, “Yes, I can do it, Mama!” whenever she needed his help.

She laughed when remembering how the kids called him Mr. President.

“I used to argue with him,” she said. “Ardi, there are many other options. Why do you want to be the President of the USA?’ But she supported him, no matter what. Whatever he wanted to do, she would be there.

“I can’t get my baby out of my mind,” his mother said. “I just sleep with his thoughts in my mind. I wake up with his thoughts in my mind.”

She thinks of him when she looks at her daughter, Farazeen. She is just like her big brother – sharp, thoughtful, ambitious.

“He’s basically my motivation whenever I’m studying,” Farazeen said. “He was a role model for me growing up.”

Chaddar’s room – and library full of books he devoured – is preserved just the way it was when he would visit home.

His father pores over his son’s writing, his debates, his speeches, his pictures, the tributes to him. His pride and love radiate as he talks about his eldest child; his grief immense.

“It is not my personal loss. People claim that it is a national loss,” his father said. “Pakistan has lost a brilliant man.”

In a June column for an English-language online publication focused on Pakistan, Chaddar wrote that his middle-class background gave him opportunities not afforded to others in his village. When he was home, he said it was common to hear advice like, “There is nothing for you here,” and “Get out of here as soon as possible.”

Despite this, being from Mano Chak and Pakistan meant everything to Chaddar. He missed home fiercely, especially when coming to the United States, Iftikhar said.

Chaddar knew his ambition would always take him away from home and the family he loved. He struggled with that, writing his thoughts out in his journal and sharing them with Iftikhar.

“The village was a place that offered a lot of peace, a lot of security,” Iftikhar said.

It is also where he drew his strength from. Chaddar wanted to be the best. Even more, his friend said, “He wanted to make his family proud.”