The CPTS Story
Blair Ringley Sweeney, owner and founder of Cardinal Pediatric Therapy Services, is a pediatric physical therapist for the Bay Rivers and Hampton Roads area. She grew up in New Kent County where her parents, David and Becky, owned a local drug store “Cardinal Drug Center.” Blair learned her love for customer service and a dedication to her community through her many days spent watching her father working behind the pharmacy counter, or at the register helping her mother run electric bills. From an early age, she loved what the store and her father offered as a service to her hometown. David’s love and dedication to his patients and his family are consistently the things the community of New Kent County has mourned since his untimely passing in 1996.
“It was the Cardinal Way. Daddy would be doing something else, get a page on his beeper, and we’d head out. He’d open his, otherwise closed-on-Sunday, pharmacy to fill a prescription. I’d run through the store, my personal playground, my safe-place, and then we’d be off to deliver the medicine to someone’s house. He’d strum his wedding band on the steering wheel and sing the whole time. He never stopped smiling, he never stopped laughing, he never stopped singing while he worked on his day off… never knowing he was teaching me the life lessons he’d never get to teach me as a teenager or adult.”
Blair left New Kent High School for Randolph-Macon College, where she received her Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry. “I knew I’d end up in the medical field somehow. Caring for people was in my blood.” Her love for research sent her on a brief stint to the University of Georgia to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemistry, but the calling for patient care was too strong. Blair went to Shenandoah University’s Doctoral Program for Physical Therapy and graduated in 2016. Blair and her husband lived in Alabama where she started working in pediatrics with a focus in development. “It just felt right. Ask anyone who knew me when I was little, if there was a baby nearby, I was trying to hold it. I love kids. And it works out, because I am a big kid.”
When the Sweeneys moved to Virginia, Blair worked in Early Intervention and thrived. “It was everything I wanted. I always hated saying good-bye to the kids and their families when they turned 3.” After the pandemic settled, she shifted gears and started working in the schools with students. And now she’s filling in the gaps in pediatric therapy services by going back to the homes, to the community, to that small town feel of patient care. “Clinics are over-run. Parents are exhausted. Insurance companies have standards that don’t always matter to the families. So I’m giving everyone another option. One we can all feel good about.”
No matter where life and her career have taken Blair, one memory has always lingered in the back of her mind: the drive down Route 60 with her dad, to do something no one did like her dad… care for patients with a smile on their face. “That was the Drug Store’s motto and mission… Service that makes Friends. When it comes to kids and their development, they make gains when they love and trust you, when you meet them and their family where they are.”
Cardinal Pediatric Therapy Services was born out of the Legacy of the Late E. David Ringley and Cardinal Drug Center. In that, Cardinal Pediatric Therapy Services is committed to the same love, dedication, innovation, respect and passion New Kent and Charles City County knew, loved, and miss from her dad’s store.
“Because our local and surrounding communities still deserve Service That Makes Friends.”