When he graduated from Nevada Union High School in 2003, Ryan Patterson hit the world running, pausing just long enough along the way to remember his small-town roots.

“Grass Valley was a great place to grow up, with all the pluses and minuses you'd find in any small town,” said the 23-year-old law student at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He returned home briefly after a summer internship in Egypt.

“I'm amazed at the growth whenever I come home. You don't notice it when you are in the middle of it all,” Patterson said.

He credited longtime NU teacher Lynn McDaniel for her guidance during his high school years.

“She was one of those teachers who doesn't just care, but is involved in the students' lives and hangs out with them,” he said.

After graduation, Patterson attended Claremont McKenna College, earning a degree in government. He also studied abroad in Morocco, where he took an intensive, three-month course in Arabic.

When he returned from Morocco, Patterson accepted an internship for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, where he developed a taste for finance through work on what was called “California's Recovery Team.”

“I had been thinking about law school for a long time,” said the dark-haired, boyish-looking Patterson, who lights up when discussing the nuances of micro-financing and international water resources law.

His decision to attend UCLA School of Law didn't come until he was in London on a business fellowship at Cambridge University.

“I worked at a great law firm in London. The city is amazing, one of those places like L.A. where there is always something going on,” he said. “It was the world's largest immigration firm. I worked for the U.S. Consulor's office with the law firm, so I was essentially in England doing American law with people from all over who eventually planned to come to the states.”

Once he was determined to go to law school, Patterson said he narrowed his list to three schools.

“I ended up deciding between UCLA and schools in D.C. and Chicago,” he said. “In the end, I really couldn't stay away from California.”

His appetite for adventure — probably gleaned from his merchant marine father — remained.

“Someone from our law school worked for this organization in Rome last summer, and it sounded like an interesting place,” said Patterson. “It's called the International Development Law Organization, and they have a variety of programs all over the developed world. The office I worked at in Cairo was helping build expertise for judges in areas of law that are underdeveloped. Water resources law is a big issue right now.”

He spent a year in the region, living on an island in the middle of the Nile River.

“Zamalek was the name of the town,” said Patterson. “It's where all the embassies are, and it's a little more relaxed than Cairo.”

The city is home to nearly 7 million people, the largest in the Arab world and one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

The office where Patterson worked was large, filled with lots of clerks and office staff due to the low cost of labor.

“Half of the ... people there live on less than $2 per day,” he said. “They were doing some very innovative things with micro-insurance and micro-financing.

“The poor have very little access to formal banking institutions, and that serves to undermine their economic growth in general,” Patterson said. “Because they are poor, the banks won't serve them, and they can't amass capital sufficient to pull themselves out of poverty.”

Patterson's interest in small business has been a lifetime in development. His parents, Lori and Milo Patterson, founded Dovetail Design in Grass Valley, operating it for some 20 years.

“I grew up in my parents' furniture business,” he said. “I worked there after schools and summers. That business was such a large part of my life growing up, and probably why I'd call myself a business Republican today.”

That, he said, makes him a minority at UCLA.

“The professor asked us once to raise our hands if we voted Democrat or

Republican, and I think 80 percent of the class was Democrat,” he laughed.

This week Patterson is interviewing for his next internship.

“The interviews last two weeks,” he said. “They get a fancy hotel, and bring all the big law firms in, and the interviews are given out on a lottery system.”

This next year, he will serve as president of the UCLA Business Law Association.

“I have two years to go at UCLA, and after that I'm hoping to practice in California,” he said.

To contact Editor/Publisher Jeff Ackerman, e-mail jackerman@theunion.com or call 477-4299.