Denise Hall is no stranger to serving her community. From serving as a 911 dispatcher to working as a paralegal, she has always had a heart for helping and serving others- something she learned from her father, Mario, a retired Norfolk police captain.

 Currently, Denise is serving her community in Currituck as the county's Register of Deeds. In this office, she oversees the recording of land transfers, deeds, and vital records such as birth, death, and marriage certificates.

It was Denise's passion for helping others that inspired her move to Currituck County 20 years ago, with her husband, Mike, a retired Norfolk police sergeant, and her daughter, Kelsey, who now serves the community as a Currituck County social worker.

"As an animal rescue volunteer, I'd been looking for land here so that I could give my rescues the space they needed to be happy and healthy," she explains. An avid animal lover, Denise fosters not just dogs, but cats and other animals as well. "My current foster happens to be a parrot," she says with a laugh.

Enchanted by the peaceful life that she found in Currituck, Denise quickly sprouted deep roots that grew strong as she began serving her new community. In addition to her volunteer work with Animal Lovers Assistance League, Denise is an active volunteer with Currituck Kids and a member of the Currituck Historical Society. She also serves on the board of the Currituck Education Foundation, which provides grants for teachers who need funding for special projects.
Denise's dedication to the community and her continual service earned her the President's Award from the Currituck Chamber of Commerce. "I felt so honored to receive that recognition," she smiles. "It has always been important to me to be active in the community, and that will never change.

Prompted by her passion for helping her community, Denise decided to run for her elected position seven years ago. "I saw that the community needed the office to be modernized," she explains. "I felt I could help update technology, which would also help the office run more efficiently. With my history of customer service, supervisory experience, record keeping, and my paralegal certification, I felt I could bring a fresh new perspective to the office."

And indeed, she did. In the last seven years, Denise has accomplished much of her seven-to-ten-year vision of modernizing the department and making it more user-friendly for the citizens of her district. "When I took office, it was badly in need of modernization," Denise explains. "I really wanted to change that, to bring us into the 21st century."

One technological advance that Denise implemented was a real estate fraud alert protection system. When property owners enroll in this free service, they receive fraud alerts. Property owners are notified by email if any attempt is ever made to change a deed in any way.

"According to FBI, property and mortgage fraud are the fastest-growing white-collar crimes in the nation," Denise points out. "In the last 18 months, we happened to catch five attempted frauds on deeds in our county. I looked into what was available to actually help detect such cases and found this new technology. It is the best solution currently available in North Carolina, and enabled us to catch the culprits. Implementing this service is my way of trying to help protect peoples' most valuable asset. I feel it's my way of ensuring that I'm doing all that I can possibly do to help and protect the citizens of the county. It's an extension of the principle our community is built on: neighbors looking out for neighbors."

Probably the most visible evidence of Denise's work at modernizing her office has been the digitizing of public records. "Before my election, few of our records were available online," she says. "My staff has been instrumental in helping to facilitate and implement my plan for modernizing records. They've worked very hard, digitizing these records and making them easily available online."

Denise didn't stop there. Once the records were digitized, she wanted to make sure that the public knew how to access and utilize them. So, she began to regularly hold open houses for members of the community, teaching them how to access these public records from home or the Register's office.

"These aren't my records. They belong to the citizens, and I want everyone to know how to access them," Denise shares. "Our open houses show people how to research records online. A lot of people utilize our records when doing genealogical research. So, we've hosted workshops for the local genealogical society. Having these historical records online makes researching one's family history so much more convenient."

Speaking of historical records, Denise is extremely excited to be in the middle of an antiquities project in her office for which she volunteered. "This project has actually played a big part in why I chose to run for office again. I would really love to be able to see it through. I've been working to preserve the county's old historical record books. Some of the books that I recently received date back to the 1700s. They're beautiful, just amazing! I love history!" she enthuses."We'll be holding all historical records for the county. Originally our vault was not conducive to storing old documents dating back centuries. So, we made necessary adjustments so that humidity and temperature levels are now appropriate for storing and preserving historical documents. Now they will last."

As the incumbent Register of Deeds, Denise hopes to serve her community with one more term and fulfill the seven-to-ten-year vision she had when first elected.

"I'm so passionate about what we do here!" she concludes. "Though we've accomplished so much, I feel that we still have so much more to do. My hope is that we continue enhancing and modernizing our technology so that we can give the citizens of Currituck County the best service possible. I'm so appreciative of the support of all of my constituents. I welcome the opportunity to serve them again."