- We achieved the American dream.
(soft music)
- Here we are, Salvo, North Carolina, the Outer Banks.
- I’m just excited to hear the beach, listen to the waves,
enjoy time with my family.
- All right, here we go.
- Just off the coast of North Carolina,
there’s a 200 mile strip of islands
known as the Outer Banks.
The region is famous for its history and for its beauty.
When the British began colonizing
the New World in the 16th century,
the first English child born here
was delivered right here on the Outer Banks.
Today the area is known for some of the best ocean access
in the entire country.
Here you can charter a private boat,
sail out into the Atlantic,
and reel in your own dinner anytime you want.
Well, you actually have to catch something.
If you strike out at sea,
there are more than 100 locally owned restaurants
featuring some of the most amazing seafood
you will find anywhere in the world.
For all of these reasons, Darwin and Barbara
had their heart set on a life by the ocean.
The real estate market is very hot,
but these two have overcome so many obstacles
to get this chance for a new future,
and they are ready to seize the day.
- [Barbara] I’m Barbara.
- [Darwin] I’m Darwin.
- And we’re here looking for our dream home.
- So there’s a palm tree, that’s interesting.
You don’t see a lot of palm trees around here, right?
- No, but we’re getting closer to the ocean, so that’s good.
- Oh yeah, just right over that dune right there.
I can practically feel it.
- [Barbara] Okay.
- We live in Draper, Utah,
which is a suburb of Salt Lake City.
We see mountains every day and now we’re looking for ocean.
- This one is on Farrow Drive, and is listed at 1.3 million.
- All right.
- So perfect for our budget.
- Yep.
- It looks really great from the photos.
I’m really excited to see it.
- I worked at the Warehouse store when we met,
and Darwin came in shopping for a vending machine business
he was doing with his father,
and he got a lot more than he bargained for.
- I did, that is very, very true.
She was doing the checkout line.
- Oh, I was checking him out that’s for sure.
- And she messed up on my order.
So when you walk out they check your receipt and everything.
I had to walk back and it was good.
I was able to see her a second time,
so I asked her out on a date.
- I said, "Oh, I’m sorry.
I have plans with my friends to go to the state fair."
- So I said, "Great, how many friends do you have?"
And I got them dates, and we all went to the state fair.
And that’s when I found out
that riding a mechanical bull is very foolish.
Okay, is it that one back there?
- It’s a light sea greenish color.
- Oh, wow.
- [Barbara] It looks fantastic.
- [Darwin] Very nice, let’s take a look.
Great wraparound deck.
- [Barbara] We could put some chairs out,
listen to the ocean.
- [Darwin] Yeah, it looks fantastic out here.
I just hope the inside looks as good as the outside.
- [Barbara] Me too.
- [Darwin] Just like me, right?
(Barbara laughing)
- [Barbara] Yes.
Beautiful, I love this open area.
- Very nice, very nice, lots of wood.
Wood is good.
The beach is this way it says, it’s this way.
- [Barbara] Oh, this looks like a great bedroom.
- Four bunks, we could get all of our kids in one room.
One room, one mess.
- We have four kids, it’s busy.
Denton is 13.
He’s very witty, he loves video games.
- Sarcastic teenager.
- Then we have Juliet, she’s 10,
and she keeps us on our toes.
She loves anything to be creative and hands on.
And then we’ve got Griffin.
He finds so much joy in nature.
And then we’ve got Genevieve, our little baby Genevieve.
She is just a light.
They’ll think it’s really fun to all be in the same room,
and have a giant sleepover.
- [Darwin] Sleepover every night.
Bathroom right off the kids’ bedroom, perfect.
So far so good.
- [Barbara] Let’s go see if we can find more bedrooms.
- [Darwin] Well, there’s what, six of them, so.
- [Barbara] Yeah.
Oh, another great bedroom.
- I think that’s a king size bed,
and look how much extra space we still have.
- Yeah.
- [Darwin] I love the windows.
I see the dune, but I don’t see.
- No ocean.
- The ocean.
Looks like we’ve got a bathroom in here.
- [Barbara] This looks fantastic.
- Yeah, great, I mean a room like this
would fit any of your sisters if they came, so real nice.
- It will be perfect.
So I grew up in a small town called Rush Valley,
about 300 people, no stores, nothing.
I have six sisters and my first job was mowing lawns,
and cleaning a house for a lady in the neighborhood.
So I started out there.
Eventually, I decided
I wanted to go to school for cosmetology,
so I moved into Salt Lake,
and that’s where I started working at the Warehouse
during the day,
and then I would go to hair school at night.
Wow, look at this room.
It’s so open, airy, I really love this.
- [Darwin] Look at all these windows.
- There would be so much natural light
coming through these windows it would be fantastic.
- [Darwin] Very spacious, very spacious room.
This fits our whole family and more.
- I wanna take a look at the kitchen.
- [Darwin] Okay, let’s take a look.
- This is big and open just like I wanted for the kids
to be able to see them,
and to have them sit at the bar while I’m in the kitchen.
- Sure.
(soft music)
- [Darwin] Okay.
- [Barbara] Oh, this is big.
- [Darwin] This is a big master bedroom.
It’s still a great view.
I wish I could see the ocean more, but.
- I mean, the sun rises over here,
so we could wake up in here
to a beautiful sunrise over the ocean.
This is a great size room, king size bed.
- King size bed, plenty of room.
- I mean, our first apartment,
we couldn’t even fit a king size bed in there
if we wanted to.
So our first apartment was a one bedroom apartment,
really small.
And then the first house we bought was four bedrooms,
but Darwin went through a job change about that time,
and we actually ended up losing that house.
- Well, that was during the recession,
and I was doing mortgages.
One day I went into work, and somebody says,
oh, wouldn’t it be funny if we all lost our job.
I thought, oh, that’s hilarious.
And then they came in and laid everyone off,
and that wasn’t fun anymore.
Then it was kind of a carousel of jobs.
We went down to Phoenix.
I was working for a trucking company at the time,
and that industry crashed ’cause it was built on housing.
Then we moved up.
My father had a business in the aerospace industry,
but that one went bankrupt.
And so we moved back to Utah,
and then my father said,
"I’m gonna buy this new consulting company."
And so 2011 I’m sitting in my office,
and my father just told me we don’t have any money.
And I’m thinking, am I gonna fail again?
And that was really the moment for me where I kind of,
back up against the wall this won’t happen.
And so we took that consulting company,
and we started building it.
And every year things got better and better.
We were able to move back into a house.
- [Barbara] Those were really long days for you
to make that business succeed.
- And we started looking online for beach houses,
’cause that was the dream.
We could almost reach it, almost there.
And then in 2018 I got sick.
I could hardly walk, talk.
I couldn’t think really.
I couldn’t remember my daughter being born,
or vacations we went on.
I couldn’t remember anything.
Finally, we were with a neurologist
at the University of Utah.
We finally had a diagnosis,
and he said that you have myalgic encephalomyelitis.
- [Barbara] You lose cognitive function.
- It was hard.
Luckily the thing for me is Barbara always supported me.
And so I started with physical therapy.
Speech therapy helped me a lot.
Fast forward 2-1/2 years.
- [Barbara] 2-1/2 years.
- I’m way better, though, way better.
Through a lot of hard work,
I finally got to get back to work,
and we found ourself financially,
we could finally do the dream, and so here we are.
- [Barbara] Living our dream home.
- Finally, yeah, living the dream, hopefully, right?
This is a big bathroom.
- Wow, this is really big.
This gives me plenty of space to spread out, do my makeup.
- [Darwin] This is big enough.
We could actually just live in this bathroom here.
- [Barbara] That’s perfect.
All of our kids just in one room.
- That’d be awesome, that’d be really good.
All right, great bathroom, let’s keep looking, yeah.
- [Barbara] Yeah, let’s look around some more.
- Plenty of room down here.
- [Barbara] Yeah, this is a big space.
This is a good little kitchen area.
- Yeah.
Oh wow, let’s take a look over here, got the pool.
Very good, that’s a big pool.
- [Barbara] Yeah.
It has plenty of space to lay out in the sun.
The kids can play in the pool.
- [Darwin] Looks like we’ve got a nice little private trail
out to the beach.
- [Barbara] That is really awesome.
- [Darwin] Yeah, what’s this door right here?
- [Barbara] What?
- [Darwin] Okay.
- [Barbara] Wow.