Patricia Lorquet

Patricia Lorquet is called Coach Patty by her mentees — the young women she helps train to become runners like herself.

The 23-year-old native of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a first-generation college student and a first-year student in Binghamton University’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

As a junior in high school with no experience as an athlete, Lorquet became involved with the New York Road Runners, a non-profit organization whose mission is to help and inspire people through running.

“I started running with New York Road Runners’ Run for the Future,” said Lorquet. The program creates opportunities for a diverse group of young women in New York City by providing an inclusive environment and the necessary resources to strengthen each participant’s abilities and confidence in herself.

The seven-week scholarship program teaches 11th-grade girls how to run, Lorquet said. “They receive a $2,000 scholarship — it used to be $1,000 — and they learn about running technique, nutrition and goal setting while building their confidence, and at the end of the seven weeks, they run their first 5K (3.1 mile) race.” There were about 20 young women in the program when it began in 2011, and serves about 125 now.

Lorquet has stayed involved with Run for the Future as a mentor and coach — hence the name Coach Patty. Which has also led to a feature in Women’s Running Magazine.

But her running has taken her further afield as well.

While a junior at the University at Buffalo, where she majored in biological sciences, a program called 4K For Cancer caught her eye —not a four kilometer race — more like a 4,000 kilometer run! So, rather than focus on her career the summer after her junior year at UB, she focused on others and personally raised more than $4,800 as the member of a 28-person 4K For Cancer team that ran from San Francisco to Brooklyn in 49 days.

“I’m a crazy runner and I found 4K For Cancer through the Ulman Foundation based in Baltimore,” Lorquet said. Ulman is dedicated to creating a community of support for young adults and their loved ones impacted by cancer through various direct-services programs.

“I had done a few half marathons at that point and it was fall semester of my junior year and I saw the ad on Instagram and thought, ‘That’s cool. I’ll apply to it!

“You commit your summer to running,”Lorquet explained. “We started in San Francisco and ended in Brooklyn over 49 days with 10 rest days including five service days where we went to cancer facilities. We prepared chemo care bags for the service days. The night before we would come in from our run and find a shipment of tote bags, toothpaste, lemon candies, crossword puzzles, fuzzy socks, some blankets, a back scratcher and a pen. All 28 of us would form an assembly line to fill the totes, and the next morning we would take them to a facility and give them to patients.”

To be considered for the 4K For Cancer run, team members must have some kind of connection to someone who had had cancer. For Lorquet, it was her eldest cousin, McKenzie, who had died from leukemia when he was 18 Lorquet. “I was much younger (8 or 9,” she said, “but I wanted to honor my family and commemorate him; that’s what drew me to run in his memory.”

The connections became motivation for the team members. “Every morning, we would have a dedication circle and hear a story about someone influenced by the Ulman Foundation in some way, and each day we would dedicate our run to someone and write their names on our bodies,” Lorquet said.

“We were 28 strangers on the first day and in New York we were like family,” she said. “When we were in sparse parts of the country where I had no cell service, some or my teammates did and so I was able to communicate with family through them.”

Lorquet ran her first marathon at the cross country run and in November 2017, ran the New York City marathon. She also completed the Buffalo marathon earlier this year, and ran the NYC marathon again.

“I’m a determined young woman and I love giving back,” Lorquet said. “In order to grow you should be able to help someone along and be able to mold them in some way. I trained one of my friends to run their first marathon and we ran Buffalo and he had no prior athletic experience. He told me ‘Your training plan felt harder than the run!’ I made sure I tailored training to the person.”

On the morning of the NYC marathon this year —the day before a Foundations exam — she was up at 5 a.m. to get to Staten Island before the Verrazzano bridge closed at 7am . “I ran the marathon, then went home, showered and was back to Port Authority to get on a bus to be back to Binghamton at 4 a.m. and take my exam at 8 a.m. — and then I slept!”

But running is just one aspect of Lorquet’s life.

She followed the path to pharmacy after initially wanting to be a nurse and attending Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens, a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) school, where she earned her nursing assistant certification. “I realized I didn’t like nursing as much as I thought and did an internship in a hospital pharmacy and started exploring that and that’s when I knew I wanted to be a pharmacist.” Lorquet said.

The summer internship Program (SHIP) was facilitated through the Brooklyn Queens Long Island Area Health Education Center. “They help place you in different healthcare settings in the Brooklyn-Queens area and you intern three days a week and attend didactic workshops, and complete a team project.

“Pharmacy can be busy, but it’s more about thinking and practical things because you’re always checking and making sure things are right,” Lorquet said. “It’s an equal balance of work and patient interaction and for me nursing was just patient interaction.”

Lorquet chose Binghamton because it’s closer to home. “And I thought it would be warmer — but it’s not!” she said. “I wanted to go somewhere where I would have a different experience and didn’t want to stay in New York City my whole life.”

She’s unsure of what her pharmacy career path will be. “I don’t know yet, but I’m really drawn to hospitals because of the opportunities to specialize,” she said. “But I don’t know what to specialize in yet because right now everything sounds good!

“I want to use school as an opportunity to figure out what aspect of pharmacy I’m drawn to the most,” she said. “I like having a connection with the community and with people.”