OUR NEW FAMILY
“A FAMILY I NEVER EXPECTED TO BE A PART OF.” KSC AMBASSADORS:THE SANKOFF FAMILY
Honduras (we even had goldfish bowls for centerpieces instead of flowers at our wedding!). Together, Saundra and I dove all around the world whenever we could, and like many other couples, diving has become one of the most important things that we do together. In 2005, our diving careers had to pause with the arrival of our first-born, Sam. Then, in 2009, twins Adam and Lauren showed up. We still managed to dive occasionally, but nowhere near as often as we had or as we wished! BACK IN THE WATER When Sam was 8, we learned of an introduction to the SCUBA program for children offered by our local dive shop. I don’t think you could have contained my excitement when I learned that kids could get certified at age 10! We imme- diately signed her up, and she took to it
with more exuberance than I could have hoped for. As soon as Sam was 10, we got her certified, but like so many others, we quickly found that diving with kids is more challenging than getting them certified. Few operators were willing to accept the liability of diving with children, and those who did often did not appear to have the experience or the necessary skills to make parents feel completely comfortable. FINDING KSC And so it was in 2018 that, like so many others who came before us, Saun- dra and I found ourselves one evening entering that fateful combination of words into the Google search bar: ‘div- ing with children’. Of course, we landed immediately on the one and only Margo Peyton, and our lives were forever changed for the better.
Jeff Sankoff I first fell in love with the undersea world w hen I was seven. OK, I am fudging that a little bit because I can’t remember exactly how little I was, only that I was very young and that it was in that kindergarten or elementary school-age window that I saw on television my first-ever Jacques Cousteau Undersea Special. I was im- mediately hooked. From that moment on, I knew that somehow, some way, I would become a diver and that it would become a big part of my life. Fast-forward to 1994, when I finished medical school and had a real income for the first time in my life. I finally took the first step toward that long-held dream and became certified as an open-water diver. A few years later, I got my girlfriend Saundra hooked on the sport. We be- came lifelong buddies when I proposed underwater while diving in Guanaja,
www.familydivers.com 803-419-2556 dive@familydivers.com
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