Christine and Tal Cottey were thrilled the day their son, Peyton, was born in July of 2007. Eager to meet him and fulfill their dream of becoming parents, they hopped on the next flight to Canton, Ohio, to finalize the adoption papers and bring him home to Arlington.
Their three-bedroom house in Alcova Heights, complete with two rambunctious dogs, Rocky and Remy, became Peyton’s happy place. It’s where he learned to walk, run, throw a ball and be a good neighbor. He’s never met his birth mother and doesn’t know his biological father’s name.
Chris, a veterinarian and vet surgeon, was the nurturing type—the only mother he knew. “She gave me my passion for animals,” says Peyton, now 18, a lanky 6-foot-3 with cropped blond hair. “I think it’s because I was always around them when I was with my mom. They can’t really judge you.”
Tal was an avid athlete, sports fan and outdoorsman who found solace in the mountains and worked as a personal trainer. He was disciplined and fun.
Peyton was a toddler when Chris was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2009 and began what would become an 8-year battle with the disease. In 2011, she took a job with the Animal Welfare League of Arlington (AWLA), becoming the nonprofit’s first veterinary director and on-site animal surgeon. The shelter was close to home, allowing her to be present for her young son as she continued treatment.
“We baked a lot,” Peyton remembers. “Chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies, and apple pie. She was always there for me. She was really smart. Whenever I had questions or troubles, she always had good advice.”
Like her husband, Chris modeled fitness, competing in triathlons, hiking Colorado’s Pike’s Peak and running two marathons. But eventually the cancer spread to her lungs and then her brain. Peyton remembers waking up at 4 a.m. one night and seeing his mom vomiting blood.
He was 10 years old and a fifth grader at Barcroft Elementary School when Chris died in December of 2017 at the age of 47.
Losing her brought Peyton closer to his father. “I got to have a really good connection with my dad,” he says. Sometimes they drove to Lexington, Virginia, to fish for small-mouth bass and trout. Tal taught him how to hunt pheasants and quail. Physical activity and quiet landscapes became the shared language of their grief.
By the fall of 2022, Peyton was a sophomore with an active social life at Wakefield High School. He and his dad had found a rhythm at home and he was becoming more independent. On Halloween night, he returned from a party at a friend’s house and had a short conversation with Tal before going to bed. “I fell and hit my head,” he remembers his dad saying.
“The next morning, I was getting ready to go to school. My dad was usually up before me. He had his appointments starting at 6 in the morning and he ended at 3 p.m. I thought he would be gone and off to work,” he says.
But Tal’s car was still in the driveway.
“I went to go check on him to see if his head was OK,” Peyton says. “I found him lying on the bed.” He called 9-1-1, but his father was already dead, of an apparent heart condition, at 58.
The weeks that followed were a blur. Peyton began living with the legal guardian (name withheld, per his wishes) whom his parents had appointed when Chris first got sick. It was a precaution they’d never imagined would come to fruition.
At his father’s funeral at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Arlington, he was approached by his neighbor, Sherean Miller. “I’m a mom. I know how to do mom things,” she told him. A managing partner with the Shirlington consulting firm FMP, Miller had taught Zumba classes at the gym where Tal worked. Peyton remembered her. He took her phone number.
He texted her a few days later and asked for a ride home from school.
Soon he was helping with little things around her house. “He’s kind and warmhearted and friendly,” Miller says. “When he sees a need, he jumps in and does it. If I’m trying to get something in my car, he’s right there lending a hand. He’s sweet and generous with his time.”
Some days, instead of going home after school, he would get off the bus and walk to Miller’s place to hang out with her kids and their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Bear. The dog reminded him of Remy, the beloved pup he’d had to rehome after his dad’s death.
In late 2024, Peyton joined Miller’s family on a Christmas trip to Miami. She says her kids think of him as their adopted big brother.
“I get choked up saying this, but I feel it’s been such an honor to be a part of his life,” Miller says. “He’s opened his heart to me and has shared a lot and really has become part of our family.”
Other neighbors stepped in, too, forming an informal support system. But halfway through high school, Peyton decided to enroll in a military academy he and his dad had been looking at before Tal died. “I was doing bad in school, and my grades were going down,” he says. “I was in a bad place. I knew I needed more structure.”
Fork Union Military Academy, a boarding school in central Virginia, became his new home in the fall of 2023. It wasn’t an easy transition. Students at the school have limited computer time and no access to social media. Cell phones are prohibited. His connection to the outside world was a landline he shared with the other students in his barracks.
Unlike most of his classmates, the choice to be there was his. “Not a lot of kids want to sign up for this,” says Kelly Barnette, Fork Union’s director of communications. “It’s a very structured environment. The typical highschooler doesn’t [leave] their phone for less than five minutes, let alone five weeks at a time.”
Channeling the athleticism he’d learned from both parents, Peyton threw himself into sports. He played varsity soccer and joined the swim team, qualifying mid-season to participate in the state championships in the 50-meter freestyle.
“Entering the competition seeded 26th, he delivered a stunning performance, dropping over a second from his personal best and finishing 8th overall,” Barnette says. “With that, he became Fork Union’s first Top 8 swimmer at States since 2018.”
After graduating from Fork Union this spring, Peyton returned to Arlington with plans to swim at Dowden Terrace in Bailey’s Crossroads. “I’m going to the gym more and trying to tone my body,” he says, “doing some of the stuff my dad taught me.”
He spent the summer detailing cars with friends from elementary school and preparing for a fresh start at Shenandoah University, where he plans to study business and—in a nod to Tal—exercise science.
He wrote his college essay about losing both parents, and what came after. “I talked about everything I had to go through, the adversity, how I had to overcome my feelings,” he says. “I don’t really talk about it that much with my friends. They know what happened. I just had to keep going.”
Meanwhile, the village that helped raise him is still standing by. “The circumstances he was dealt could have really hardened many people in his situation,” Miller says. “He’s responded with grace and strength and resilience and an open heart. He’s trying to make the most of it.”
Wendy Kantor is a freelance writer who lives in Northern Virginia with her husband, two kids and her beloved dog, Rocky.