Freedom was everything to Samantha Tsuchiya. She loved the outdoors, particularly skiing, snowboarding, and dirt biking with friends—and was an evacuation nurse, riding in helicopters to bring in sick or injured kids from rural outposts. She served in the Peace Corps, teaching at a government nursing school in Kampala, Uganda, and never missed a chance to join a team.
As her mother, Jan, remembers, “Sam just really loved helping people. They naturally turned to her.”
Samantha Keiko Tsuchiya died April 10, 2025, just shy of graduation from the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) program. In her memory, her parents Jan and Gordon Tsuchiya established the Samantha Tsuchiya Scholarship to support CRNA students. Their hope is to honor Sam’s legacy and open doors for those who, like Sam, are committed to caring for others and seeking the freedom to shape their careers.
The Samantha Tsuchiya Scholarship is the first of its kind dedicated to supporting students in the CRNA program at Johns Hopkins.
“The Samantha Tsuchiya Scholarship honors a colleague, friend, and inspiration who made us laugh, exemplified a good work ethic, and helped bring her cohort together during the challenges of training,” remembers former faculty member Andrew Benson, who led the CRNA program while she attended. “She was an incredibly hard worker whose dedication left a lasting impression on those around her. Samantha reminded her classmates that strength and humor can exist even in the most demanding moments of this profession. This scholarship reminds us—and future CRNAs—of her spirit to support one another, work hard, persevere through challenges, and care for every patient with both skill and heart.”
Jan and Gordon hope to keep growing the scholarship to help more students “do all the wonderful things they hope to do.”
Historical Footsteps
Samantha Tsuchiya’s career choice might seem pre-ordained, based on Jan and Gordon’s retelling of the family story of Great Aunt Mary, Samantha’s favorite from Gordon’s side of the family and an unstoppable force in her own right.
After the bombing by Japan of Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor in 1941, Mary, a first-generation Japanese American, was sent with her brother to an internment camp in Delta, Utah. More than 100,000 Japanese Americans—mostly U.S. citizens—were similarly rounded up as a “security” measure, relocated, and imprisoned in concentration camps by the U.S. government.
The Delta camp had only a rudimentary hospital, “maybe a doctor and a dentist,” says Jan. That’s where Mary’s brother was sent when he developed tuberculosis. Mary quickly volunteered as a “candy striper” to help care for him and others. With no anesthetist around, “The dentist one day taught Mary to drip the ether, so here is this 17-year-old essentially functioning as the camp anesthetist.”
The proof is in the picture, a framed piece of art that features Great Aunt Mary in her candy striper uniform across from an image of Samantha working in a modern operating room. “The family joke is that Sam had really come full circle with her Aunt Mary,” Jan laughs.