The Wardle Family
Seashells to Seaside
story by MICAH PEPPERS photos by ANGIE V PHOTOGRAPHY
There are almost two million military spouses in the United States. Sometimes, when planned and other times surprised, service members and their families will receive orders to move. They will have to relocate, often to an entirely new state, and leave behind everything they have grown to know. Once they reach their new destination, they must get situated. Where to live? What neighborhoods are best? Where do the kids go to school? It can often be overwhelming. This is where Cydnee Wardle comes in.
In 2008, while on spring break from her university in Chicago, Illinois, Cydnee headed to California. While walking on a beach near Camp Pendleton, she heard a voice say, “Need help finding seashells?” When Cydnee looked up, she met Dave; the two have been inseparable ever since. At the time, Dave was an Amtrac Amphibious Assault Vehicle driver stationed at Camp Pendleton. “I went back to school after break. That summer, I packed up all my belongings and moved to California. We never looked back.”
Beginning his career with the United States Marine Corps in 2008, Dave completed back-to-back combat deployments to the Middle East. In 2014, after some time in both Camp Pendleton and MCAS Miramar, Dave and Cydnee moved to Michigan, where Dave attended the University of Michigan. He commissioned into the Marine Corps as an Intelligence Officer, and the family headed to Virginia for The Basic School (TBS). In 2018, they received orders to Beaufort, so they picked up and moved to the Lowcountry. Fourteen years and three children later, the Wardle family are experts in relocating. “We know firsthand about moving and learning about new environments.”
In 2012, while Dave was stationed at Camp Pendleton, Cydnee joined the PCS Pay-It-Forward™ community. “It was an amazing resource, so when I moved to the Lowcountry, I knew the Beaufort bases needed something like that.”
Established in 2018, PCS Pay-It-Forward is present in over 100 military communities, and has aided over 50,000 service members and their families throughout the country. When military families move, they often go into a rental property sight unseen. Unfortunately, many families have fallen victim to rental scams on their Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move. Per the pcspayitforward.com site, “PCS Pay-It-Forward is a FREE program for military families committed to creating a smooth transition from one duty station to another by increasing access to resources and support. Our mission is to eliminate the need for interim housing and reduce the number of families falling victim to sight unseen rental scams on their PCS Move.”
Cydnee goes on to explain further. “I run the local Pay-It-Forward page to provide free resources to the spouses. Not everyone wants to buy or sell a home, so we work to protect renters and plug the spouses into the local life quicker. We fill the new spouses in on the schools in the area, give them neighborhood profiles, and show them pictures. We walk and drive through neighborhoods, including base housing, and send albums of amenities, homes, and interactive maps. We show them the more popular areas and really try to give the spouse a good picture of what they’re walking in to. It also varies from location to location. For example, we have 820 members on our MCAS Beaufort and Parris Island page, but San Diego has over 10,000.”
Cydnee is the PCS Pay-It-Forward Ambassador for MCAS Beaufort and Parris Island, but getting that title wasn’t a quick process. “It’s a 10-step process. There are tests involved, a panel interview, a CEO interview, et cetera. There are numerous others that apply for it who want to be ambassadors.”
Cydnee doesn’t just stop at running the local PCS Pay-It-Forward page. She is also a real estate agent. “I got my real estate license in March 2019, and now I’m with EXP Realty LLC and jumped in with two feet.” Now a top agent in the Lowcountry, she still devotes much of her time to helping other military families. “Some of what I do in Pay-It-Forward funnels into real estate. I have always had a pull to wanting to help service members and their families be confident in their military life, and now I get to do that by helping them get plugged in quicker to the communities they move to and optimize their experiences at their new duty station. I still work with mostly military families, with 99% of our buyers and sellers using a VA loan. In addition, all of our vendors we use are spouses or veterans, such as landscapers and housecleaners.”
Cydnee doesn’t spend all of her time working. In her free time, she, Dave, and their children, Johnathan (age 10), Levi (age 8), and Madeline (age 6), love going to the beach. They especially enjoy Hunting Island and boating around the sandbar. Cydnee adds, “We love the Beaufort area and all it has to offer. Dave has about five years until he retires, and once that happens, we plan to call Beaufort home.”
