Richmond "Richy" Merced Garcia

"Richmond “Richy” Merced Garcia died June 9, 2026, in Seattle, Washington. Richy was born May 3rd, 1999, in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was the second child of Ed Garcia and Kirstin Lambrecht, sandwiched between her older brother Carson and younger brother Grey.

Throughout her life, Richy was an utter joy. Pleasant, empathetic and was always eager to engage in whatever life had to offer.

Despite her pleasant demeanor, Richy was extremely competitive from a young age. This, coupled with being extremely bright, meant she excelled at school. She played various youth sports but decided early to focus on softball. Softball melded well with her meticulous and deliberate approach to everything she pursued. Her childhood was spent on countless family adventures, playing club softball and spending time with friends. She was the recipient of the “coveted” Wildcat Morris Award at Betsy Rhodes Elementary, an award given to the best athlete. She attended Hyde Park Middle School and West Career & Technical Academy where she graduated as a salutatorian and was a member of Palo Verde’s 2017 State Champion Softball Team.

After graduating High School in 2017 and wanting a rigorous education and the opportunity to continue playing softball, Richy attended college at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. She graduated with a degree in Biomedical Engineering but the most notable things she took from her time at Case were the many friendships she would make and maintain well beyond graduation.

Immediately after college, she moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan to work on the covid vaccine at Pfizer. It was at work where she would meet Sean, who also was a biomedical engineer. In 2024, they would relocate to Seattle to begin building their life together. She continued her career at Evotec and spent her free time hiking, walking Alki Beach and visiting the local farmers market with Sean.

Richy loved her family and friends first and foremost, but a close second were animals, particularly dogs. While there were many of life’s milestones she was sad she might miss after receiving her diagnosis, the only thing she voiced regret of having not accomplished to that point was that she had waited so long to adopt a dog.

Richy had a firm moral compass. Her friends and brothers would experience this moral code when she would readily admonish them when their escapades exceeded some boundary all the while completely keeping their secrets because, after all, she “wasn’t a narc.”   

The last years of Richy’s much-too-short-life were filled with family, friends, her family’s dogs and Sean and their cat, Bean. She loved to cook and was an adventurous eater. She made frequent girls’ trips with her college friends. She traveled through Northern Europe and saw the northern lights with her childhood friends Mo and Ally. She later hiked Machu Pichu with them and Sean. She was particularly proud of the fact she didn’t have to ride a burro for any part of the difficult hike even though her disease had returned. This was partly attributed to her competitive nature but also because she was happy she “didn’t have to make the burro work so hard.”

Richy approached her original diagnosis, the subsequent recurrence and her treatment with the same dogged determination and positivity she approached everything in life. Never one to suffer fools, she had a way of questioning medical assumptions that garnered not only the respect but the affection of medical professionals she met along the way. The impact Richy had on the doctors she encountered was evidenced by the countless medical practitioners from across the country invested in her treatment.

Richy was fiercely proud of her family. This pride and the love for her family was returned in spades. There was no clearer example of this than when both her brothers volunteered without hesitation to be a living liver donor in an audacious attempt to save her life. Tragically, her underlying disease, an extremely rare form of inflammatory tumor, did not allow her to recover from the transplant surgery and she passed away after a month-long battle in the intensive care unit.

Richmond is survived by her mother, Kirstin Lambrecht, her father, Ed Garcia, brothers Carson and Grey, grandparents Gregg and Mary Lambrecht and many aunts, uncles and cousins.

Richy was the light of her family’s life and her passing leaves an irreparable hole. The family would like to thank Sean for his unwavering love and support of Richy, her many friends who made the trip to visit during her treatment and the medical professionals at University of Washington, particularly the Transplant Group. A private memorial for Richy will be held in Seattle. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Animal Foundation in Las Vegas. https://animalfoundation.com/get-involved/other-ways-to-give/give-in-memory/ or the University of Washington Medicine Liver Transplant Service Gift Fund at: give.uwmedicine.org/give/ 

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Richmond "Richy" Merced Garcia, please visit our floral store.