Patricia Cloherty, Trailblazing Venture Capitalist, Dies at 80

Her parents worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad during World War II and ran a dry cleaning shop in the city after the war ended.

In the Venture Capital Association interview, Ms. Cloherty recalled how she first learned about making a bet.

Her maternal grandmother, she said, while caring for young Pat and her siblings, would, with “her bottle of gin,” take them to the local horse tracks to wager on races.

“Mind you, we were only 3, 4 and 5 years old, so we hit the track early,” Ms. Cloherty explained. “That’s my upbringing.”

When she was about 5, she said, the family moved to Pollock Pines, Calif., a hamlet a half-hour south of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada. Her father had jobs there as a logger and in construction; her mother was a real estate agent and a librarian. The couple also ran a soda fountain.

In Ms. Cloherty’s telling, the family was poor, and life in the mountains could be rugged. But there was plenty to keep one occupied, she said. An avid reader and self-described “superb” student, she was also a good athlete and a tinkerer who used instructions clipped from Shredded Wheat packages to make a waterproof matchstick holder, a reflector oven and a tent from a military-surplus parachute.

As a 12-year-old, she recalled, she was on a ski outing with two friends, carrying homemade camping gear, when an avalanche stranded the girls for two days. She was left with lingering effects of frostbite for more than 50 years.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/business/dealbook/patricia-cloherty-dead.html