CERT co-founder receives lifetime achievement award

Published 4:30 am Wednesday, May 27, 2026

For nearly 10 years, Cindy Zechenelly has been dedicated to helping prepare Sequim residents.

In the summer of 2016, she and husband Blaine created the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program to organize, train, equip and maintain a readily deployable group of highly trained citizen volunteers to safely augment local first responders in a wide-spread disaster.

For her efforts, she was recognized on May 19 by Clallam County Fire District 3’s board of fire commissioners with a Lifetime Achievement Award through the President’s Volunteer Service Award program managed by Points of Light.

According to the commissioners’ proclamation, Zechenelly’s hours worked exceeded 4,000 hours of lifetime service to qualify for the award.

She and Blaine were also honored in 2020 with the Governor’s Volunteer Service Awards through Serve Washington.

Cindy Zechenelly said CERT grew from a California program “that was developed after too many volunteers died trying to rescue victims of a deadly earthquake in Mexico City.”

She serves as the coordinator because she feels someone needs to do it, and she has many years of experience doing paperwork of various kinds.

“I was retired and now find myself ‘reassigned,’” she said.

Cindy Zechenelly said that since August 2016, when they began training people within the area, she’s realized this area is very special.

“Not only the people who grew up here have the ‘community spirit of helping others,’ but so many of the transplants, including the Zechenellys, had successful lives elsewhere and moved here for less congestion, no smog, and now want to give back to this community,” she said.

“I cannot imagine finding so many people to train in even a portion of the county I grew up in. Every year we try to improve the CERT training to fit our area’s expectations and in doing good, good comes to us.”

She said CERT has supporters who help volunteers with their “Wish List,” and they continue to add tools and supplies to all of the 17 teams.

CERT has a large conex trailer for extra supplies, and Cindy Zechenelly said they hope to have a trailer soon for events and training.

“We share all of these improvements with all of our CERTs (and) some CERTs work independently on ideas to make our work easier,” she said. “It is great when this can become a new effective tool.”

Fire commissioners commended Cindy Zechenelly in their proclamation for “her exemplary dedication to volunteerism” and congratulated her and the Eastern Clallam County CERT Program for “outstanding contributions to the community in the realm of emergency preparedness.”

According to CERT members, Cindy Zechenelly helps administer the CERT program that has grown to 17 regionally-based team organizations with more than 478 volunteers.

She registers all new CERT volunteers, coordinates Academy classes, schedules CERT events, issues official identifications, compiles year-end report statistics, supports public information work, and more.

Volunteers calculate that she has helped process more than 978 individuals for the CERT Academy.

They estimate that CERT volunteer hours have been worth about $4.9 million for the community.

“Cindy Zechenelly’s selfless leadership has supported this highly cost-effective program that materially augments Clallam’s professional responders during an emergency,” CERT members wrote on her behalf.

“Her indefatigable volunteerism exemplifies the true strength of our community.”

Cindy Zechenelly said she nor Blaine plan to retire from volunteering in the near future.

Sequim’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program is sponsored by Clallam County Fire District 3 and its training consists of three eight-hour classes held on Saturdays. It trains volunteers how to prepare for and survive a catastrophic event.

For more information, email cert@ccfd3.org​ or call Cindy Zechenelly at 360-504-2531.