Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series about the interesting ways current islanders came to live on Vashon and how being on the island has changed the course of their lives.

Islanders Coco and Brennan Banks are travellers.

The two met in Kenya as college students studying international relations and travelled between the United States and Africa when Brennan landed a job with the American Red Cross. But what was consistent throughout their travels, and their eventual move to Vashon, was the need for community. Vashon’s sense of community won them over, but only after they read about the island in a Sunset magazine article about the best places in the world to live.

The family bought a house in Maury Island’s Sandy Shores neighborhood in 2012, but did not become full-time residents until 2014. Prior to the 2012 home purchase, Coco and Brennan were living in South Africa with two young children while Brennan worked what Coco called “an ex-pat job” with the Red Cross. Realizing they loved to travel but needed to settle down, they began discussing where to put down roots.

“We made the decision to move back to the states and buy a home,” Brennan said.

But where?

“I originally wanted Vermont,” Coco said. “We

looked at Georgia and were tossing around the idea of a few other places, but then Sunset magazine came out with their best places to live.”

On the list was Hawaii — which Coco said she and Brennan considered, New Zealand — “No way,” Coco said, and Vashon.

“We had no idea. We had never heard of it (Vashon),” Coco said. “I said, ‘It’s so close to Seattle, but it’s rural? How?’ But Brennan kept coming back to it.”

They and their children visited the island for a week in early 2012, met with a real estate agent and put an offer on their now-home after seeing six houses.

“All in a week,” Brennan said with a tone of disbelief in his voice with the fact it happened so quickly.

For Coco, Vashon’s surroundings seemed too good to be true.

“It was too idyllic. There were like all these deer in the backyard of these huge properties, and I thought it was staged, like they had them in a cage and let them out when people came to buy a house,” she said laughing.

After the visit, the Banks’ went back to Africa and, 60 days later, found out they owned the home in Sandy Shores.

They lived on Vashon part-time, in the summers for two years before becoming permanent residents. Now, Coco works as a teacher at the french immersion preschool she founded on Vashon, Le Ouistiti. Brennan commuted to Seattle to continue international humanitarian work for a few years before deciding to work from home as a global humanitarian advisor. They said living on Vashon has encouraged them to find a better work and family balance while creating an “amazing group of friends.”

In addition to being a teacher, Coco is on the DOVE Project board and Brennan is president of the Sandy Shores Homeowners’ Association. This creation of a personal community represents a stability that Coco and Brennan hadn’t had since before college, and weren’t seeking until recently.

Both attended United States International University, which has campuses in San Diego, California, and Nairobi, Kenya. Coco attended the Nairobi campus and Brennan attended the San Diego campus, but decided to transfer to the Nairobi campus.

“We were neighbors,” Coco said in an interview recently. “I had seen him around and thought he was cute, but never did anything. I will always remember my mom was visiting me one day and walked into his apartment and said, ‘My daughter is moving in next door, make sure to take care of her,’ before coming back to me and talking about how clean his apartment was.”

The two began dating and when they graduated and Brennan moved back to California, Coco followed him. They got married and moved to San Francisco where they had their now 9-year-old daughter, Cassandra. Coco worked as a teacher, but then, when Cassandra was 2, Brennan received a job offer in Kenya, where he and Coco originally met, so they moved.

“It was actually somewhat of a homecoming for Coco,” Brennan said. “She had a lot of family and friends there, so it was nice.”

They were there for two years before Brennan received another offer in Johannesburg, South Africa. Coco began working as a teacher at a French school in South Africa and was pregnant with the couple’s second child, William, who is now 5.

It was after the birth of their son that they began seeking a more permanent home.

“Moving from place to place it always kind of felt like you had to make friends really quickly and grab up whoever you could to have this safe community around you,” Coco explained before saying that Vashon has allowed for a more deliberate process and an ability to get to know more people and become more involved. “I feel we have kind of created our bubble.”