Mollie Davis Scholarship awards $1.35M to 47 Yakima County students

The Brief 47 Yakima County high school graduates received a combined $1.35 million in scholarships through the Mollie Davis Scholarship program. Mollie Davis died in 2008 and secretly set aside more than $20 million to fund scholarships for future Yakima County students. 72% of this year's recipients are first-generation college students, with school choices ranging from Yakima Valley College to Columbia University. YAKIMA, Wash. — Forty-seven Yakima County high school graduates received a combined $1.35 million in scholarships June 17 at a ceremony held at the Crown Ballroom in Yakima, continuing the legacy of a woman whose generosity went unannounced until after her death. The students were recognized as recipients of the Mollie Davis Scholarship. The program awards up to $10,000 annually toward a bachelor's degree and up to $4,500 annually toward an associate degree. Davis died in 2008, and her family learned she had quietly set aside more than $20 million to support the education of future Yakima County students. "Mollie was planning for your future at that moment, at this very moment tonight. She would be so proud to see each and every one of you," said Josh Logsdon, president of the Yakima Rotary. Davis was a homemaker and cattle rancher who lived with her husband, Warren Davis, at Hidden Valley Ranch in Thorp. Warren served as president of the Kittitas County Cattlemen Association. Davis also inherited a substantial sum from her parents, who built their livelihood in the lumber and orchard industries. After Warren's death in 1977, she returned to Yakima, where she quietly accumulated the fortune she would later dedicate to local students. Among this year's recipients is Emily Gallardo, a Sunnyside High School graduate who also earned special recognition and an additional $1,000 for her essay submission. Gallardo will attend Columbia University, an Ivy League institution in New York City, where she plans to study biomedical engineering. "It means a lot that somebody is investing their hard-earned money in my education for the near future," Gallardo said. "I am going into biomedical engineering. I had two disabled siblings and I dealt with a lot of medical devices, so with biomedical engineering I plan to deal with medical devices in a clinical setting." School choices among this year's recipients span a wide range of institutions. Some students will attend nearby schools such as Yakima Valley College, while others will head across the country to universities including the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Seventy-two percent of this year's scholarship recipients are first-generation college students, a detail that underscores the scholarship's reach into families who may not have otherwise had access to higher education funding. COPYRIGHT 2026 BY APPLE VALLEY NEWS NOW. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.