Fall 2026 Winner of the Children of Injured Workers Scholarship

Gracelyn Pepper

Gracelyn, an incoming freshman at Washington State University, has been awarded $1,000 through our Children of Injured Workers Scholarship. In her essay, Gracelyn discusses the lasting injuries her father suffered after being electrocuted at work. As a first-generation student, Gracelyn hopes to utilize the perseverance her parents instilled in her as well as her passion for protecting children to become a child psychologist.

Read Their Essay Here:

I remember the exact moment my dad came home from the hospital after being electrocuted and thrown off a ladder at his job in Seattle. He was tired, disoriented, and his entire right arm was covered in bandages. The first time he took them off to show me, being five years old at the time I was terrified to see my father’s hand and forearm blistered covered in a gradient of red to purple bruising. The electricity had run through his nervous system, damaged his brain, and ruptured his eardrums, which gave him chronic tinnitus. It took him another 6 years to reach the point of seeming like my dad again. He was angry, he never slept, my bedroom was across from him, and I could hear him writhing and screaming in pain most nights. Fast forward to knowing that I have a better understanding of what happened, I am so eternally grateful that he never gave up.

I have spent my entire life surrounded by and involved in both childcare and community service. These two things have shaped who I am, and who I hope to become, inspiring my career path along the way. I have always loved taking care of my three younger siblings, working at my grandmother’s daycare, and my current job being in afterschool programs ran by my city’s community center, but what solidified my dedication to this journey to become a child psychologist was the summer of 2024. During that summer I nannied full time for a travelling couple, by the end of the week they were set to be travelling 4 hours north but were so impressed by my caretaking abilities they decided to cancel all other sitters and bring me along with them in their trips. This experience was so meaningful to me because I knew I had found what brought me real meaning to myself and others. At the end of their trips the mother wrote my own mom a letter, telling her how astonished and grateful she was for me and how she hoped that her own daughter would grow up to someday be like me. This experience was extremely important to develop my sense of responsibility and understanding the true joy I got from being a safe and welcoming place for other kids. This scholarship would aid me along my journey to achieving the ability to better understand and help future generations. It would also help me become a first-generation graduate student and show my parents that through all of the hardship they have endured, especially my dad after his accident, they have something to show for it. Neither of my parents graduated college, my dad was never made for the education system, and my mom was a great student, but gave up her educational career to raise me when she fell pregnant during her sophomore year as UW. They both sacrificed so much of their young adult years to give me a better life, so it would be an honor to receive as much financial aid as possible, to take financial stress off of them, and to give them something to be proud of sacrificing so much for.