Rachael A. Rawlins

1964 - 2020

RAWLINS, Rachael A. Rachael Anne Rawlins passed away at Ascension Seton Medical Center, Austin on Monday, June 29th, 2020 at the age of 56. She is survived by her two sons, Jesse Rawlins Paterson and Jake Rawlins Paterson; by her parents, Dave Rawlins and Anne Rawlins; and her sister Saundra Rawlins. Rachael was born in Long Beach, California on July 9th, 1964. Her family resided in Huntington Beach at that time. They later moved to Danville and Alamo in the Bay area, where Rachael entered kindergarten and started gymnastics.. A few years later, the family moved to the Capay Valley in Yolo County. She spent much of her free time in her childhood outdoors, roaming throughout the valley on her horse, Rodger and rafting in Cache Creek. Gymnastics was a passion for her, and she went to great lengths to compete, at times traveling 3 hours in each direction to get to a gym just to train. She traveled across California competing and at age 18, after graduating from Davis High School, she was accepted into UC Berkeley as an athlete for their gymnastics team. Her team was training for the Olympics to be held in Russia when the US withdrew from the games. She decided to travel to Russia anyways for her study abroad after learning the language as a minor alongside her major in French Literature. After graduating from Berkeley, she went to study at UNC Chapel Hill, where she graduated with a master's in city and regional planning and met her husband (now divorced) Robert Paterson. She and Robert moved to Los Angeles so that she could study at UCLA, School of Law but they soon moved to Austin and she transferred to the University of Texas School of Law so that Robert could pursue a position as a lecturer at the school. She received her J.D. from UT with honors in 1993, specializing in land use and environmental law. She worked as an attorney at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality from 1993 to 1998, before opening up a private land use law practice and teaching as a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin Graduate Program in Community and Regional Planning. Her research at UT-Austin focused on environmental protection and land use planning. She cared deeply for her students, and would work with those that were struggling well outside of the classroom hours to help them. She was the recipient of the University Co-op Outstanding Scholarship and Best Research Paper Award awards in 2013-2014 and was promoted to Distinguished Senior Lecturer. She traveled the world with her family, always in search of new adventures. For her, there was no such thing as a bad adventure, just good stories waiting to be told. She possessed an unyielding sense of compassion and always felt the need to advocate for the wellbeing of her friends and family. She never quit striving and working towards ways to help the people and causes she cared about. She regularly organized gatherings and events that brought people together, creating community wherever she went, from the families of our neighborhood to her fellows in Master's Diving and Swing Dancing. She was a fierce and passionate fighter to the very end. She never did anything halfway. Her ashes will be scattered on her favorite California beaches. In lieu of flowers, an environmental law scholarship has been established by the University of Texas at Austin. Please send donations to the Rachael Rawlins Memorial Fund, at https://tinyurl.com/RRMemorialFund.