Dr. Tam lived in Jamaica, Queens, Dr. Dorcé-Medard in Corona, so they would pair up for study sessions that went late into the night. The two made it into the medical school, a four-year program from which they both graduated in 2013. Dr. Dorcé-Medard recalled seeing Dr. Tam last year, as they were finishing their residencies. “Can you believe we did it?” she remembered telling her. “It was like we conquered something together.”

After Touro, Dr. Tam started her residency in family medicine at Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, N.J., and from there she moved to a clinic in Harlem, which placed her back in the kind of community she had sought to work in.

Image Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam

One memory of Dr. Tam sticks with Dr. Iyad Baker, who supervised her as program director during her residency: The family of a patient called after a visit to talk about her work. Often, he said, people called to complain. But in her case, they wanted to convey their gratitude.

“She was never above tucking her patients in at night,” Dr. Baker said. “She would come in even when her shift is over," he added. “She’d ask the human thing, just what a good person would do: Can I get you a glass of water? Would you like me to get you a magazine? Things that are not very common to do in the field.”

Dr. Tam’s professors remembered her sweet smile and her politeness. Colleagues and friends said she was shy. Her commute, to New Jersey as a resident, and later to the Bronx, was a punishing one, a long way to travel from Queens.

One mentor, Dr. Naghma Burney, said that last year Dr. Tam spent what should have been a month off working with her in the hospital, hoping to learn more.