Kate, whos full name is Kaitlyn Marie, was the first born child of Guy & Linda Vasconcellos.  Wanting to arrive with a special flare, at the time of her birth she held everyone off for several days choosing to make her arrival into this world as a wedding anniversary gift to her parents at 1:22 AM, June 27, 1990...her parents ninth wedding anniversary. 
 
At a very early age Kate fell in love with entertainment, and theatrical experiences. She would spend hours studying videos, movie and television shows to learn the characters and their lines. She quickly got to where she could recite entire scenes of dialogue.

In 1993, when Kate was just three, the family relocated to Bridgewater, New Jersey.  While her childhood activites included many typical extracurricular activities such as soccer, basketball, girl scouts, and piano - her real love that developed into a passion was drama, singing and musical theater - both from a participation perpective and an entertainment perspective. At ages as young as seven and eight, she would rather go into New York City and see a Broadway show versus almost any other type of entertainment.

After returning to the Sacramento area in 2002/2003, Kate became very actively involved in the Rocklin, Roseville and Sacramento area Community and School Theatre programs and Best of Broadway.  She regularly requested to received singing lessons from area coaches.

Kate, who attended Whitney High School from 2005 through her graduation in 2009, was a member of the inital two graduating Whitney High School classes when it was first established in 2005. This circumstance turned out to work well for Kate, as she was able to work with the new Drama Instructor, other students and parents to build from the ground up a Theatre program at the new school.  During her high school career, she was in every Whitney High School theatre production and was the first president of the WHS Drama Club.  Kate also continued to be very active in Community Theatre and Best of Broadway and directed and choreographed several children's theatre productions in the Rocklin and Lincoln areas. She was also instrumental in establishing the Thunder Cats summer theatre camp for young children which still serves as the primary fund raising activity for the WHS Theatre program.

Upon her graduation in 2009, she first attended USC enrolling in their theatre program.  Always adventurous, Kate decided to transfer to The University of St. Andrews in Scotland after her freshman year at USC. Because of credit transferability issues and a change in her major to Economics at St. Andrews she essentially started over as a "first year" student. At St. Andrews University Kate was a member of the Gilbert & Sullivan Society music choir and entertainment troupe.

Kate was a caring individual who valued her relationships with others and found great satisfaction in serving others through counsel, advice, mentoring and friendship. While at St. Andrews she became a Nightline Volunteer. Nightline is a student-run confidential, anonymous listening and information service at the University of St. Andrews whose aim is to provide a safe place for students to speak about whatever might be on their mind in a non-directive, judgment-free enviornment. She also became involved in the Universit's LGBT Society and will be remembered as the lone heterosexual to serve on the LGBT Board.

Last summer she had the opportunity to combine her passion for musical theatre with her economics studies, through an intership at The Sacramento Musical Theater Company. This summer she was looking forward to putting her newly minted Economics Degree to work with interviews set up in the Sacramento area.

Kate was one of a select group of graduates to be awarded the St. Andrews Student's Association Honorary Life Membership in recognition of her outstanding contributions to student life at the University of St. Andrews. Kate had learned she was recieving this award shortly before her passing.

At the time of her passing, Kate was just weeks away from earning an Honours Degree in Economics at St Andrews University. In fact, she had presented her Honours Thesis on "Financial Literacy in Adults" just days before she passed. It is with tremendous gratitude that we have learned that the University has agreed to grant her a degree posthumously.

For The Love Of Kate