Anita Pat Eamsureya enjoyed every moment of life, friends and family members said.
Whether playing tennis, perfecting her Chinese or participating in her business fraternity, Anita Pat Eamsureya always knew how to live life to the fullest.
“Pat lived and loved her life everyday,” senior computer science major Tam Nguyen wrote in an email. “There was never a moment she was not happy to be alive.”
Eamsureya, 19, a sophomore international student from Thailand, was found dead in her Commons 3 apartment the morning of July 7. University Police received preliminary information from the medical examiner’s report speculating she died from a blood clot in her brain that led to a stroke.
Police are waiting for the medical examiner’s report for additional information, according to Lt. Robert Mueck.
Eamsureya journeyed to this side of the world to major in accounting at this university’s business school. In her first year, she joined a wide array of organizations — the tennis club, the business fraternity Phi and watching soccer and tennis.
“She had tons of friends, and everyone loved her,” sophomore accounting major Yishu Wang wrote in an email. “She always smiled and tended to help others or to think for others.”
Eamsureya grew up in Bangkok, Thailand, where her family owned a restaurant that specialized in making one of her favorite dumplings called Shanghai Xiao Long Bao.
Although she was a Thailand native, her father’s relatives were from China. To honor her heritage, she began learning Chinese before she went to elementary school and enrolled in elementary Chinese at this university.
And her love of the Chinese language and the country in general was one of her most defining traits, according to Nguyen.
“She always said she was Chinese, and she loved China, and that she was not Thai — jokingly, of course,” he wrote. “That was part of her charm — everything she said made you smile.”
Senior public health major Nikko Khuc said Eamsureya’s smile and kindness set her apart.
“I would talk to her after having a really hard day and [she would] tell me to look on the bright side and joke around with me,” he said. “She was the most caring person I’ve ever known, and she was always very happy, and the world should know that if there was anyone out there that can make someone smile, it’s Pat.”
Eamsureya was the epitome of an international traveler, since she visited Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai dozens of times and was in France with her parents a month before she died, Wang said.
Eamsureya’s friends said they will always remember her zest for life and that more people should adopt this vivacious attitude.
“Pat was always just Pat. Smiling, warm, friendly and a well-rounded, wonderful person,” Nguyen wrote. “The world doesn’t have enough people like her. People should take a lesson from how she lived. She was never bogged down by the past, nor scared of the future. She lived every moment of her life happily and free.”
Eamsureya is survived by her parents, Orachorn Eamsureya and Arun Eamsureya, of Bangkok; and her brother, Part Akata Eamsureya, 21, who is studying in New Zealand.
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