Cheryl Parker has called Del Rey Oaks home since 2020. Like many residents, she came here looking for a place to put down roots, and she found it. She and her husband have spent the past five years renovating their home in DRO and weaving themselves into the fabric of this community.
She grew up in a small rural town, where she learned early what it means to rely on your neighbors and to show up for them in return. Those lessons stayed with her. So did her grandmother — an immigrant from England — with whom she lived and who taught her firsthand about the dignity of elder care, the realities of living on a fixed income, and what it looks like when a community either catches you or doesn't.
That upbringing pointed her toward civil engineering. If she was going to give back to her community, she wanted to do it with her math and science skills — building the things people depend on every day without even thinking about it.
Cheryl is a licensed Professional Engineer with a Master of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering, having graduated with distinction. Her career has taken her through nearly every level of government, public utilities, and the private sector — but it has always been guided by a single purpose: making sure communities have the solid bones of infrastructure they need to thrive.
She has worked as a transportation engineer, a private sector consultant in mine water treatment and rockfall stability, a coal mining regulator holding industry accountable during operations and reclamation, an environmental waste and drinking water engineer, and most recently as a Civil Engineer for the federal government and at the Marina Coast Water District — where she worked on the water supply, recycled water, and delivery infrastructure issues that matter most to Monterey Peninsula communities.
Her commitment to clean, safe water started long before that. As a volunteer with Engineers Without Borders, Cheryl helped design and install a water pipeline for a rural village in Honduras — ensuring that a small community had reliable water for the very first time.
She knows government at all levels. She knows how it works when it's working. And she knows exactly how it fails when those in charge stop being accountable to the people they serve.
In March 2026, Cheryl attended a Del Rey Oaks City Council meeting to advocate for something straightforward: an open, competitive RFP process for the development of the city's Fort Ord land. The kind of process she works with every day. One that protects the public interest, ensures fair competition, and gets the best outcome for the city — not for a favored few.
They ignored her. The council instead voted to limit competition to a few favored developers — exactly what an open RFP process is designed to prevent.
That was the moment Cheryl decided to stop watching from the sidelines.
Del Rey Oaks deserves a council member who understands accountability, asks hard questions, and won't stop until she gets real answers. That's not a political instinct. It's an engineering one.
