“I was so overwhelmed with happiness that I cried,” Daniella Penaloza told PEOPLE of the moment she learned she’d won the scholarship
NEED TO KNOW
- Daniella Penaloza, a South Carolina teen, lost her father unexpectedly in 2022
- Daniella, who used to golf with her dad, recently earned a college scholarship for caddies worth more than $125,000
- The teen said the scholarship money has lifted an “immense amount of weight lifted off my shoulders”
A South Carolina teen who lost her father found her way back to the sport he loved — and it ultimately changed her future.
Daniella Penaloza, a recent graduate of South Aiken High School in Aiken, was recently awarded the prestigious Evans Scholarship, a full college tuition and housing scholarship for golf caddies worth more than $125,000.
For Penaloza, the moment she learned she had earned the scholarship is one she’ll never forget.
“When I received the scholarship, it came on the day I least expected it,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I received a text from the new owners of the house my mother and I lived in: a picture of a large envelope, with the text, ‘You got mail,’ dinged my phone at 9:07 in the morning.”…