Her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Pearson, Pete Pendergghast, was a wing operations staff officer at FE Warren Air Force Base. He worked in the chain of command three positions below me. He had served on my staff for the previous eight months. Brianie did not yet know. Brian Pendergast's first letter to me arrived in October of 2024.
It was a Sentinel Ridge Estates HOA community standards advisory addressed to Callaway Ranch RR2 Box 47 Cheyenne WY8209. The advisory expressed concerns regarding visual aesthetics of vehicles stored on residential rural acreage adjacent to community boundaries and respectfully requested that the longtime adjacent property owner consider relocating older model commercial vehicles to enclosed structures during daylight hours. The older model commercial vehicle was my father's 2009 F250. The adjacent rural acreage was a Callaway family ranch that had been on Saddle Ridge Road 18 years before Sentinel Ridge Estates had broken ground. I read the letter at my kitchen table on a Saturday morning.
Marray was in her judicial chambers in Cheyenne reviewing a federal sentencing memorandum. My father was on the porch in a wool jacket watching the dogs. I wrote Brian Pendergast a polite letter back declining to relocate the truck. I did not yet know who her husband was. I learned 3 weeks later on a Tuesday morning when Lieutenant Colonel Pete Pendergast cleared my office door at 07:30 for the Wing weekly staff meeting.
He was a 46-year-old man in a service dress Air Force uniform with the rank of '05 on his shoulder boards and the operations plans division on his name tag. He had been on my staff for 8 months. I had reviewed his officer performance report two months earlier and signed it without raising my eyebrows. He sat in the second row of chairs in my conference room. He briefed the wing on the weekly missile alert readiness schedule.
He returned to his desk in the operations plans office at the conclusion of the meeting. I returned to my office at 0915 and asked my executive officer, Major Bridget Hourbach, to pull Lieutenant Colonel Pendergast's personnel file. I read the file at my desk in the early afternoon. His current home address was listed as a Sentinel Ridge Estates residence. His spouse's name was listed as Brian Pendergast.
His spouse's occupation was listed as homeowners association president, Sentinel Ridge Estates, HOA. I sat at my desk for a long moment. I closed the file. I asked Major Hourbach to schedule a closed door meeting at 0800 Wednesday with Colonel Aurora Reinholm, the F Warren Air Force Office of Special Investigations Detachment 803 Commander. Colonel Reinholm arrived in my office at 0800 sharp on Wednesday.
She was 44. She had served on the AFOSI active shooter response task force in 2017 and on the Pentagon joint investigations liaison in 2020. She had been my AFOSI counterpart at FE Warren since my command tour began. I briefed her on the Pendergast family situation. I told her I had no specific allegation against Lieutenant Colonel Pendergast at that time.