Year-old nonprofit now provides 100 monthly airport rides for Marines, families

Imagine you’re 18 years old, with no credit card, too young to rent a car, and living away from home for the first time at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. With just 48 hours’ notice, you’re granted leave to fly home and see your family — if you can book a flight and get to the Palm Springs International Airport in time. 

The cost of using a rideshare or taxi for the nearly 62-mile journey easily exceeds $100. That’s where 29-PSP comes in. 

The nonprofit offers free rides between the Palm Springs airport and the base for active-duty military members and their families traveling on leave. 29-PSP, which recently celebrated its first anniversary, also offers some limited transportation to and from the Ontario airport. 

When granted leave to visit family, service members often receive only about 48 hours of advance notice and typically only get 96 hours of leave. This creates a time and money crunch, with costs of last-minute flight bookings quickly adding up. 

“Time is of the essence to get off base, get to the airport, get on a flight, get home or wherever you’re going, and then get back on base within 96 hours,” said Sherman Tam, chief development officer for 29-PSP (Tam, like everyone else at 29-PSP, is a volunteer). Tam says the majority of service members who rely on 29-PSP are too young to rent a car, and many also don’t yet have a credit card or much experience with arranging travel plans.  

“When you hear about it, you’re like, ‘Okay, I understand the struggle,’ especially when the average cost is $250 (round-trip) if they can find a taxi or ride share company to go up there,” said Tam. 

Another issue is the size of the sprawling Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, the world’s largest Marine Corps training base. Unless a rideshare or taxi driver has been previously vetted and granted access to the base, they can only drop off or pick up people from the front gate. That means service members need to find someone on base who can pick them up and take them back to their housing (which can be anywhere from one to five miles away, according to Tam), or head out on foot. 

29-PSP’s volunteer drivers are pre-vetted to get access to the base, providing what Tam calls “door-to-door service.” 

29-PSP started when a previous group that provided the same service, SOS Ride, disbanded at the end of 2023. A group of five volunteers from SOS Ride recognized the need to keep offering transportation to Marines in their families and formed their own new nonprofit to do so. 

The organization now averages 100 rides a month, with pick-up and drop-off duties spread across 33 volunteers (and 29-PSP is actively looking for more volunteer drivers). Tam estimates the average age of volunteer drivers is around 75, with many retirees and veterans making the round-trip drive up and down Twentynine Palms Highway. 

The driver application and more information on volunteering are available at www.29-psp.org/volunteer. Volunteers use their own vehicles and can either donate their fuel costs or receive reimbursement. 

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