Rancho Palos Verdes residents Kim and Todd Trimpert will bid auf Wiedersehen to the Peninsula this summer, embarking on more than half a day’s journey to their new home in Stuttgart, Germany, with their two elementary-aged children in tow. It will be the couple’s eleventh move in 20 years.
The Trimperts are a Coast Guard family. An itinerant existence comes with the territory. Every two or three years, they pack up and relocate to wherever Todd’s next assignment requires. It’s a lifestyle that comes naturally to Kim and Todd, who both grew up in military households. Kim’s father was a career Coast Guard officer; Todd’s was a career Navy officer.
The couple met in 1990 as cadets at the US Coast Guard Academy. Following tours of duty in locales as diverse as Pensacola, Florida, and Juneau, Alaska, they landed in Palos Verdes in June 2009, when Todd began a two-year assignment as commanding officer of Coast Guard Air Station Los Angeles. They chose to make the Peninsula their temporary home after hearing enthusiastic reviews of the area from colleagues who had lived in the Coast Guard quarters at Point Vicente Lighthouse.
“We looked at every point of the compass from the Air Station,” Todd recalls. “And it became pretty obvious that Palos Verdes would be a great place to live.”
Although the lighthouse quarters were unavailable, the Trimperts managed to find a spectacular alternative. A craigslist query led them to a midcentury, ranch-style home for rent with sweeping northwest views over the bay. Once they secured the rental, Kim and Todd swiftly handled the mundane aspects of the move in order to maximize time spent on more meaningful endeavors, like making friends. This approach has become their ritual.
“When we move into a community, we give ourselves about a week or ten days to unpack the boxes, put up the pictures, put up the curtains, and move in,” Kim explains. “We go out and meet everybody and start our new lives, because you never know where your best friend may be. Maybe they are just down the street.”
With the Trimperts’ sincere investment in participating locally, it comes as no surprise that the PV community has readily embraced them. Kim and Todd agree that what they anticipate missing most about the Peninsula – even more than its school system and climate, both of which they adore – will be its sense of community.
“The people are fantastic,” says Todd. “There are people here that have known each other for literally decades. So, when you kind of parachute into one of these communities, it can be difficult to be accepted. And that really hasn’t been the case here.”
Having lived mostly in small towns like Kodiak, Alaska, which Kim affectionately characterizes as having “more bears than people,” the Trimperts were pleased to learn that PV could afford them many of the same benefits their previous assignments provided.
“Palos Verdes is…very rural-esque,” says Kim. “People that live here [also] work here and play here and shop here. It has the same feel as so many other communities we’ve lived in.”
Thanks to a fellowship from the RAND Corporation, Todd’s tour of duty was extended, which allowed the Trimperts to stay in PV a year longer than anticipated. Shortly after his change of command ceremony last July, Todd began work as a research fellow in the National Security Division at RAND, where he focuses on counter-drug and counter-migrant issues, among other things. His assignment in Stuttgart with the US European Command Counter Trafficking Branch will deal with similar concerns.
Working in the intelligence sector is relatively new for Todd, who has built his 20-year career in the Coast Guard on his merits as a search and rescue helicopter pilot. Since his first aviation tour in Astoria, Oregon, in the early 1990s, Todd has been passionate about his trade and about sharing that passion with others. His two-year tenure as commanding officer of the Coast Guard Air Station afforded him the opportunity to reach a broad, local audience, including school children from Rancho Vista Elementary.
“For their Veteran’s Day celebration, we brought in a Coast Guard helicopter. …We landed in the ball field,” Todd remembers. “Whenever you get a chance to do that, you never know which of the small children you might talk to that day will take from that an imprint and will go off and do something similar.”
Leaving a positive imprint is something the Trimperts encourage their 9-year-old daughter, Hayley, and 11-year-old son, Tristin, to do as they travel from place to place. During their time in PV, the children have been actively involved in Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, AYSO, and other extracurricular activities.
“We’ve tried to demonstrate to them how you can be part of a community and give back,” says Kim.
True to her word, Kim has set a strong example for taking personal initiative in community enrichment. In less than three years, she’s made a lasting impact on the Peninsula. In addition to her involvement with the Philanthropic Educational Organization (P.E.O.), an international group dedicated to promoting women’s education through financial grants and scholarships, Kim founded the PV Bike Chicks, a local group dedicated to promoting women’s fitness, fun and self-reliance.
With a teaching degree in secondary education, a master’s degree in public administration, and 15 years of land use planning and coastal zone management experience, Kim has mostly worked within her field of training. Upon moving to PV, however, she decided to try something new. She took a job at the PV Bicycle Center in Rolling Hills Estates hoping to meet other cycling enthusiasts in the community.
A longtime mountain biker – she and Todd began mountain biking together around 20 years ago – Kim is still relatively new to road cycling. While stationed in San Francisco in 2006, Kim and Todd became interested in triathlon training and, as a result, cycling. Prior to moving to PV, Kim had never ridden with anyone but her husband. She soon realized many of the would-be cyclist women customers at the Bicycle Center were stuck in the same rut.
“A lot of women sounded like me,” says Kim. “They didn’t want to go out and ride [alone] in case they got a flat tire.”
Determined to cultivate a group of women cyclists and empower them to competently operate their own bikes – including correct usage of gears and ability to change a flat – Kim started collecting names and email addresses. Dubbed the PV Bike Chicks, the group set out on their first ride in March 2010. Since its inception, the roster has grown to encompass more than 270 members, ranging in age from 22 to 82. On March 14, the Bike Chicks celebrated their two-year anniversary with a Ladies Night celebration at the PV Bicycle Center.
Meeting three mornings per week, the Bike Chicks average between 20 and 25 miles per ride, but various alternate routes are available to accommodate different fitness levels. “It depends on the desires of the group,” Kim explains. “Everybody’s welcome and there’s definitely something for everyone in the group.” Safety is a priority for the Bike Chicks, and Kim encourages members to attend the free maintenance clinic held each month at the PV Bicycle Center.
Ultimately, women don’t have to cycle to join the Bike Chicks. Part of the function of the group is to foster friendship and reinforce self-worth. Kim views it as a social opportunity to meet like-minded women from all different backgrounds. The goal is to encourage women to dedicate time to themselves.
“Because we’re multigenerational, we’re caring for children, we’re caring for spouses, we’re caring for aging parents,” says Kim. “One thing I tell the ladies is that you can’t take care of anyone else until you take care of yourself.”
Kim’s firm belief in self-sufficiency is part of the Coast Guard heritage she shares with Todd and her children. Autonomy provides a sense of roots, a constant when the scenery is always variable. A framed poem by an anonymous author hanging in the Trimpert’s home contains this simple, yet defining, phrase: “Mobility is my way of life.”
To learn more about PV Bike Chicks, go to www.pvbikechicks.org.
To learn more about P.E.O., go to www.peointernational.org.
