Patrick R. McElhiney has volunteered over 10,000 hours of time in his life with non-profit organizations, including those listed below. He has become an environmental steward while growing up in Turlock, CA and Dover, NH. Patrick has been stomping out a path to call his own - for the purpose of representing the good work that he has done, to that of professional integrity, even when the work has not been profitable. This work has helped to develop good business skills, and develop mutual respect towards Patrick and his community. It makes him feel great - like he's making a difference, even while at the same time the opportunity cost is high, and he could be doing something else that makes his company more money. If there's one thing that Patrick has learned - it's that money isn't always the motivating factor in decisions. He truly has a footing to reach out to people and understand what their needs are, to develop logistical infrastructure that can deliver on those needs.

Patrick also has good environmental habits, such as recycling and reusing things for different purposes after they have already been used. An example of where this started was in Fourth Grade, when Patrick built a model of the International Space Station using ordinary garbage, such as the plastic containers that his father had slid his shaving razor blades out of to represent solar arrays. Patrick also built a paper-mache Space Shuttle using a 2-liter bottle and some cardboard. Patrick was inspired by his grandmother, Dottie McElhiney, who was an influential environmentalist that worked at California State University, East Bay in Hayward, CA. Patrick drew and colored signs to promote world peace and taking care of the environment for his grandmother's environmental campaign. Patrick also learned how to garden from her, and his father, Michael A. McElhiney, who was the District Conservationist for the United States Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation District in Stockton, and later in Patterson, and then in Modesto, CA.