Kelly Bracken Patton Graham

Born April 26, 1985, Santa Cruz, California

 Written by her mother.

     Kelly was born in the same year the Lottery started in California.  Although we did not win anything the first (and last) time we bought a ticket (see photo below), Kelly has always been a lucky girl.  Happy and outgoing, she made friends easily and took on leadership roles in Girl Scouts, sports and theater.   The love of her life became softball when, in fifth grade, she was persuaded to play catcher in Santa Cruz GALS and never looked back.  We traveled all over the state and even out of state to cheer her on to many victories through her high school years.  Her leadership role as catcher and her wicked arm earned her a respectable reputation throughout the leagues.  She was also on Harbor High School’s Varsity team, playing shortstop and using that arm to put out many players on the bases.

     Kelly attended the University of Oregon, a semester of Cabrillo College, and the University of California Santa Barbara where she graduated in 2007 with a degree in Business Economics.  She connected with her future husband, Ryan Graham, at Cabrillo (although she had known him since high school), and they were married in 2014.  They lived in Alameda in the East Bay near Ryan’s work at Mercury Mail.

     Kelly’s career has taken her from working at a toy company in Santa Cruz to the YMCA in San Francisco where she was named Employee of the Year in 2011, to Oakland and The East Bay Agency for Children, and back to the Y where she was an Executive Assistant to the COO and CDO.  After Kelly and Ryan had their first daughter, Avery, in 2016, they relocated to Santa Cruz and Kelly got a job as Operations Manager at a property company downtown.  Their second daughter, Addison, was born in 2020. Kelly now works at the University of California, Santa Cruz as the Executive Associate for the Vice Chancellor of Research. The family lives only a couple of miles from Richard and Chris who are called Papa and Nana by the girls.