Liza Salazar walks out of the Family Birth Center at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford Thursday.

When she was a young child, Liza Salazar, a Medford resident originally from Los Angeles, was hospitalized and required long-term care.

She remembers it as a vulnerable time for her and her family. She had a working mother with other children to take care of, so Salazar would sometimes be alone at the hospital.

“When she was not able to be there, these nurses stepped up as every role possible for me,” Salazar said.

At 17, Salazar became a nursing assistant. Now 34, she’s about to enter her senior year at Oregon Health and Science University School of Nursing, Ashland Campus, at Southern Oregon University.

“I really wanted to make sure that — if anyone was in that same position or that same situation, as a child patient or even as a patient overall — that they received the same amount of compassion that I received,” she said.

Salazar is one of 15 students to earn a scholarship through the William G. and Ruth T. Evans Endowed Nursing Scholarship program for the 2023-24 academic year.

The awards — between $6,000 and $18,000 each — will cover about half the students’ tuition at either OHSU’s Ashland Campus or Rogue Community College’s Table Rock Campus in White City.

Another 22 students who graduated Friday from RCC’s practical nursing program will receive smaller awards to fund their final steps before joining the field: taking an exam to get licensed through the state.

The awards total nearly $180,000, according to the Ashland Community Health Foundation, a nonprofit that administers the scholarship fund.

Students agree to spend at least a few years practicing in the Rogue Valley, where health care shortages, from nursing to primary and specialty care, abound.

Bill Evans was a family practice physician in western Pennsylvania. When he retired, he and his wife, Ruth Evans, moved to the Rogue Valley, where their eldest daughter, Peggy Evans, lives.

After Bill died in 2002, Ruth told Peggy that she wanted to create something — less in memory of him than to support something he believed in, Peggy said in an interview.

“It just happened that that evening I was watching the local TV news, and I saw one of the channels had done a story on the nurses shortage in the Rogue Valley,” Peggy recalled. “My mother had been an Army nurse during the Second World War; she was in Australia, the Philippines and New Guinea.

“And so I thought, ‘Well, maybe she’d be interested in putting together a scholarship.’”

Ruth agreed it was a good idea.

More than 300 nursing students have since received Evans scholarships, totaling over $1 million from the Evans endowment and community donors.

Two decades later, the Rogue Valley still needs nurses. Ruth died in 2013.

This will be the second Evans scholarship for Salazar, who has worked at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center for about 11 years. She began in oncology with cancer patients, then moved to neuro-orthopedics with patients who have been through strokes, motor vehicle crashes and various bone surgeries. For about seven years, she has worked in the maternal child unit.

One time, when Salazar was at church, a woman recognized her outside. It turned out that Salazar had helped the woman’s sister through end-of-life care.

The woman embraced Salazar, telling her how much her care meant.

“It was just everything for me,” Salazar said, “and it continues to be.”

OHSU Bachelor of Science in Nursing

• Lizbeth Aguilar Chaparro

• Samantha Blommel

• Seairra Fitzgerald

• Shelby Lane

• Cole Moore

• Edgar Perez Rivera

• Liza Salazar

• Saima Shah

• Hanna Whitescorn

OHSU Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing Program

• Marie Mazur

• Jacqueline Ramirez

OHSU Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science Program

• Kelsey Strouse

Rogue Community College Nursing Associate Degree Program

• Kylie Edmaiston

• Kelli Hall

• Marisol Navarro