Reagan Cornish has moved more times than most people her age can count. The 17-year-old daughter of an Air Force family has lived in Hawaii, New Mexico and twice in Northwest Florida, uprooting her life each time her father, Chris Cornish, received new orders.

• But if there’s one thing all that moving has taught her, it’s how to walk into a new place and find a way to make it better.

On Saturday, Cornish and a group of volunteers gathered at the Fresh Start for Children and Families campus in Fort Walton Beach to plant a butterfly garden, install a 100-gallon water barrel and build a fence around exposed AC units near the organization’s playground and community center — all part of her Eagle Scout project.

“I’ve become very passionate about this project, and I’m so excited to help make Fresh Start a more welcoming space,” Cornish said.

Fresh Start provides transitional and affordable housing for families working to get back on their feet. The organization’s campus includes temporary housing, paid apartments, a community garden, a playground and a small preschool classroom for children whose parents can’t afford daycare.

Cornish said she discovered that roughly half of the outdoor space near the community center wasn’t being used because chicken wire had been put up to keep children away from the AC units. By building a proper fence around the units, her project will open that space back up for families.

• The butterfly garden itself will border much of the fenced-in area around the community center, playground and garden. Cornish selected native plants suited to Northwest Florida’s sandy soil and climate, particularly in light of the recent drought the area has been working through.

“With how hard it can be to grow stuff here because of all the sand in the soil, you really have to look for native plants,” she said.

The project also includes a picnic table, which volunteers installed during a prep day last week when the team tilled new soil into the ground and raked the area.

Cornish said the idea came together after she called around to several local organizations looking for a project that would let her work with her hands. She contacted about five organizations before reaching Donna Tashik, executive director at Fresh Start.

“We talked for 40 minutes about what Fresh Start needed, what Fresh Start was, and that’s when I got really invested,” Cornish said. She was particularly moved by how Tashik described the families who go through the program and how many of them stay in touch long after graduating.

• “Hearing some of the stories and that people who go through her program still keep in contact with them, it was amazing to hear,” she said.

Cornish’s path to Eagle Scout has been anything but conventional. She spent nine years in Girl Scouts before joining Scouting America in 2023 after her family moved to New Mexico. Her mother, Rachel Cornish, initially looked into it for Reagan’s younger brother, Asher, but when the family learned girls were now welcome, Reagan and her fraternal twin sister, Alexis, decided to join.

At their very first troop meeting, both were voted into leadership roles. Alexis was elected senior patrol leader, and Reagan was voted in as scribe, responsible for all the troop’s record keeping and communications.

“With a lot of stuff in scouting, it’s very scout-orientated, youth-led,” Cornish said. “If you don’t go out and do it yourself, you can’t earn the merit badges, and you can’t actually progress. So it shows a lot of work ethic and dedication.”

The twins are now both finishing their Eagle Scout requirements. Alexis is working on her own project with the Ronald McDonald House, assembling care baskets for children. The family held a diabetes awareness event on May 9 that drew more than 30 people and raised over $1,000 for the effort. Reagan said the family spent somewhere between 50 and 70 hours canvassing to promote that event alone.

The Cornish family first lived in the area from 2008 to 2013 before returning in 2025. Reagan said coming back meant reconnecting with their church, Cinco Baptist, and familiar faces who remembered the family from years earlier.

Both twins work at the Bernie R. Lefebvre Aquatic Center in Fort Walton Beach, and both are set to be among the only seniors on the Choctaw High School swim team next year. The family homeschools but is affiliated with Choctaw for classes and sports.

• Reagan said she plans to bring something from her old swim team in New Mexico to Choctaw — team dinners before or after meets to help build camaraderie.

It’s a fitting instinct for someone who has spent her life arriving in new places and finding ways to bring people together.

Cornish’s troop, 5529, is the only girls Scouting America troop in the Fort Walton Beach and Navarre area. She said she needs to finish two more merit badges and complete Saturday’s project to earn her Eagle Scout rank.

On Saturday, the team removed a total of fifty-three, 50-gallon yard bags worth of debris and had a total of 16 volunteers the first work day and 13 volunteers the second work day. Bringing the total of service hours to 152 over the two workdays of the project.

“Scouting has definitely been one of the best things that has happened to me,” Cornish said. “Everywhere you go, you can find people, and everyone’s so willing to help each other out.”