Getting To Know Your Neighbors: Patrice Wright

By Lynne Velling

Have you ever known someone whose favorite color is Orange? If not, just visit Patrice Wright and enter her living room ..... orange carpet, big orange painting on the wall, orange pillows and maybe more!

Patrice found herself looking for some work a few years back. She dove into an online Medical Interpreter Program and now not only works in this field, but works for the company who provided that program! She remarked that she’s learned a lot about health and is very gratified to be able to serve others who so appreciate the Spanish interpreter services she provides.

mother, “My mom is almost blind. I take care of her. We play cards everyday because she loves it and doesn’t like to go out. She prefers to be home.” Fortunately, Patrice is able to see all the family in California, Mexico and Canada, so keeps her passport alive and active.

Self-identifed as a Mexican-Canadian-American (a “NAFTA girl,” she laughed), Patrice is one of the happiest, most loving and grateful persons and American citizens you could ever meet! She “loves, loves, loves” being here in the MCC community. It’s changed her life, she said, being so involved with and cared about by others. That wasn’t always the case, she says, having moved here as a renter initially from Palm Springs where she lived for twenty years with Byron Wright, her loving husband, now deceased.

They lived there part-time, as he was Canadian, from Vancouver. Patrice and Byron, a commercial fisherman who loved to cook, gourmet chef, she says, enjoyed golf, travel, family and coming south part of the year. But she longed for more connection after his passing. She found a rental at MCC, a community she said was so friendly when she moved here, and before long, it became a home transformed from a rental.

Known as Patricia in Mexico City, she married young and had a baby girl and a son three years later. She described that time as one where she was so involved with kids and family, she missed out on some things young women pre-20 do to explore life. That marriage eventually ended when he passed away. Among other jobs she took on - real estate, mobile home sales, appraiser, secretary - Patricia being quite entrepreneurial, like her mother, owned her own beauty shop as well as a restaurant at one time. Her mother, Soledad (95), lives with Patrice now.

Maybe she is making up for lost time now, Patrice mused, describing how she loves to go, go, go and explore and experience like she never did in younger years. Her son Luis, a cybernetics engineer, has his own family now, with four grandchildren Patrice loves to visit family near Sacramento. Luis has a sister of whom Patricia is really proud, Lore (Lorena), a graphic designer. She and her wife Kristi, a nurse, live near Yosemite, and love adventure, just as Patrice does. In fact, all three of them went to New Zealand two years ago, with the younger women doing the Ironman, Patrice assured me. She was so excited for them, and loved what she experienced “down under.” Patricia shared more about her

You might hear Patrice’s warm laugh or see her on the pickleball courts, in the Clubhouse with the Putters, raising money for Pink Week, at parties.... and a lot of other places, including the Eisenhower Neuro-Science and Spinal Institute nearby where she works. One thing for sure, not much dust settles under her feet because, as she told me, she “never says ‘no’”!

90 Seconds

That’s the longest you will wait for the lights to change on Monterey at either MCC gate. Seems longer, we know.

Violation fine if caught running the light:

$480