It was easy to see where little Laura Dawson was headed not too long after she was born to Fay and Walter Dawson in 1949. One of her first and favorite books was Nurse Nancy, complete with a small supply of band-aids.

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After the family moved from Pomeroy Washington to Edmonds in the early 50s, her aspirations about being a nurse had not diminished. And by 1964, as a High School sophomore, she volunteered as a Candy-striper at the newly opened Stevens Memorial Hospital across the street from Edmonds High School. She quickly gained a reputation for her eagerness to learn and her compassion for the patients she attended to. Staff, from RNs to doctors, took her under their wing, and thus began her 'official' training to become what she always wanted to be, nurse Nancy. Secretly she was being groomed to be an RN and allowed to scrub in on surgeries and 'assist' on other procedures that should have been restricted because of her age. The minimum age for volunteers to do this was overlooked, and soon she was in a very intensive and exciting, hands-on school taught by many of the staff at Stevens. 

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At the High School, Laura took all the courses she could to further her goal of becoming a nurse. It became clear after her performance during a medical emergency at school one day that she had 'The Right Stuff' to become a great nurse. A student fell through a large plate glass window on campus and sustained life-threatening lacerations. As everyone else ran from the bloody scene, Laura stepped in and saved the boy's life by tending to the deep cuts on his arm. 

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She won the coveted 'Volunteer of the Year award at Stevens Hospital that year. It would be the first of many such achievements she would go on to earn.