LCC student Page seeking career in FBI

By Mallory Stiles
Editor in Chief

General Motors employs over 93,000 people across the United States and had a reported revenue of $156.7 billion in 2022. This is partly thanks to employees like LCC student Patrice Page, who has spent over a decade learning the business and climbing her way to the top.

She said she started as a temp, became a supervisor and is now in a specialty department, but still pulls a GPA high enough to earn her a spot on the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society.

“I work for General Motors,” Page said. “I have worked there for 11 years. I am a part of their ‘launch team,’ so I help my department, the paint department, launch new vehicles.”

Page, 35, said that while her career remains most important, nothing completes her like academic success.

Page has always been a highly intellectual person, but her first college experience was lacking and left her feeling so uninspired that she walked away from it all.

“I felt like I was on my own,” Page said. “I didn’t receive any help from my academic advisers. I felt like they gave up on me, so I just gave up on myself.

“Now that I am older, education is more exciting to me than hanging out with friends or things like that.”

Page took three classes last semester. She will be continuing her educational journey this summer by taking Biology and Criminal Justice Organization, for a total of seven credits.

“I’m doing my general associates degree but my concentration is pretty much criminal justice,” Page said. “My dream job would be to work for the FBI on their human trafficking task force.”

The age cutoff for the task force is 37, so Page is in a race against time, but laser focused and hopeful.

She said she knows that even if she doesn’t make it to the FBI, she will still end up somewhere within the judicial system, whether that is as a court clerk or a case manager, and that will be enough.

She said her pull toward the field comes from her own lived experience that gave her a need to rescue others from that same pain.

“As a victim of domestic violence myself, I understand how hard it is to get back up on your feet or even to ask for help,” Page said. “I just want to be an advocate for others still in that situation.

“I was young, early 20s, and I didn’t think I could do better or get out of it, but I did.”

Page said she loves cars and driving fast. She has no children but does have three siblings that she said she has to mother often, describing herself as the mature one.

She grew up in Flint, graduating high school as cheerleading captain with honors. She said she has always found a way to keep hope alive and bring joy to the world around her, even from the beginning.

“I am just trying to make people smile, trying to make someone’s day,” Page said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a compliment, or just a smile, or just saying, ‘Hey, you okay today?’

“It’s just about actually caring how someone else is doing.”

She survives on soul food, V8 energy drinks and the good people she surrounds herself with, including Robert Wade Jr., who is Civil and Human Rights chair of UAW Local 602 but also a dear friend.

Wade met Page as a temp and didn’t hesitate to comment on her ambition and how it seems to bleed into everything she does.

“What stands out the most to me about Patrice is her resilience,” Wade said. “She is always bettering herself, constantly. I have watched her over the years just grow and grow.

“She never stays stagnant; she is always educating herself and striving for better.”

If she isn’t working, studying or spending time with loved ones, she is having fun at Firefly Hot Yoga Barre in downtown Lansing.

“I really enjoy area yoga,” she said. “It’s pretty much regular yoga but you are in a hammock suspended in the air doing different yoga poses.”

Page is set to graduate in spring of 2024. She looks at pictures of graduates often to remind herself of what the finish line will look like. She said that every step of her journey has taught her something, but she has realized it is attitude that holds all the power.

“I believe that you get back what you put out into the universe,” Page said. “If you are kind, positive and always wanting the best for people, you are going to attract those same type of people.

“Honestly, I didn’t think I would be here today, but I made a choice to change who I was and the things I didn’t like about myself. When I did that, my world just changed.”