Lone Tree nurse becomes first female Army Ranger School graduate
Lone Tree’s Molly Murphy became the first female nurse to graduate Army Ranger School after three months of training. The 27-year-old captain is also a pediatric ICU nurse at Walter Reed.
Molly Murphy of Lone Tree became the first female nurse to graduate from U.S. Army Ranger School, giving Douglas County a hometown name in one of the military’s most punishing training pipelines. Murphy, a 27-year-old captain and ICU nurse, finished the course in July 2024 after three months of intense physical and mental training.
Murphy’s path ran from Colorado to Army service and nursing. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln identified her as an Army ROTC alumna, and one report said she works as a pediatric ICU nurse at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland. Douglas County School District also highlighted her as a Highlands Ranch High School alumna in a feature headlined “HRHS Alum Graduates From Army Ranger School as the First Female Nurse.”
The hardest part, Murphy said, came before the course even started. CNN quoted her saying, “I did not sleep at all the night before, I was so scared, way in over my head.” That kind of honesty fits the scale of the milestone: Ranger School is designed to test endurance, decision-making and leadership under strain, and Murphy became only the third nurse to graduate and the first woman in that role to do so.
Her graduation also sits inside a broader shift in the Army. Ranger School opened to women in 2015, when Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver became the first women to graduate. By March 2022, the Army had confirmed that 100 women had completed the course, and by January 2025 that number had reached 154. Murphy’s finish added another layer to that history, not just as another woman in the ranks, but as a nurse whose day job depends on calm, precision and pressure.
For Lone Tree and the wider Douglas County community, Murphy’s achievement connects local schools, military training and public service in one story. It is also the kind of milestone that carries beyond a résumé: a Colorado native from Highlands Ranch High School reaching a place few service members ever get to, and doing it in a field where women are still underrepresented at the highest levels of elite military training.
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