Meet Greg

Greg Hinson kicked off the new year with a new job. His role as a legal assistant has him drafting, scanning mail, and running to the courthouse. Thriving on details, his favorite part of the role is seeing all the pieces come together and the strategy designed to push a case forward. Those 2,000-page case files he scans may as well be a mountain of best-sellers. He’s already hitting the books to get ready for his paralegal certification test.

As a kid, he prepared himself for a fruitful career in pro skateboarding. Or surfboarding. Whatever worked out first. But he always had law in the back of his mind. After all, some of his family members are lawyers who often praised his natural ability for being able to argue with anybody, though they’d have to break through his quiet-guy facade first.

He realized he was different early on. That he genuinely liked people. And their stories. Restocking groceries at the Piggly Wiggly just doesn’t satisfy his innate desire to know and assist the walking novels around him.

Greg is a man of the people and has worked a wide array of hourly jobs before landing at Cape Fear, from fast food to independent living. Ironically, though he enjoyed the latter the most, he opted to cohabitate with the lovely fellow English-major he met at Appalachian State University and made his wife. While he focused on poetry and she on prose, there was an overlap of a single class during which, “we all got to know each other really closely. And we started spending more time with each other. One thing led to another.”

College was an immense change for Greg moving from the sleepy little historic town of Beaufort, North Carolina to the big city buzz of Boone. Population 18,036. Leaving the car behind and walking from place to place in the city center was new territory.

“The place I’m from, you can’t really walk [to different shops and restaurants] because there aren’t really sidewalks; there’s just kind of road and grass,” Greg recalls.

He fell in love with sidewalk living and hasn’t gone back.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Greg spent his first two years in higher education finding himself, his major, and where the sidewalks led. He also found a passion for rock climbing. Local climbing gyms were nice, but the real joy came from tracking down unpublicized, privately owned rocks that others in the close-knit climbing community shared through word-of-mouth.

Greg admits to spending hours on Blue Ridge Parkway hunting down the pull-off that led to the trail…that ended with a well-loved boulder. His lips are sealed when it comes to the particulars.

In Jacksonville, a rock desert, Greg has picked up some next-level pool and billiards skills. He hones his talent in Rack’m Pub & Billiards, a place he could literally walk to from home if the occasion called for it.

As a not-so-secret novelist, writing and books also play a large part in this legal assistant’s life. Greg’s wife nicknamed him “Gre-gooey” after he misspelled his own name on a college paper. Now, they workshop anything they write between themselves and their friends. They used to have a book club until the novels got bigger than the free spaces in their schedules.

Occasionally, even the couple’s lab and yorkie are asked for input on drafts. While the two initially didn’t agree on anything—Moxi, a cuddler, and Caid more of a bounce-off-the-walls type—they’ve become tentative friends due to long-term proximity.

One book that has left a lasting impression on Greg comes from his hardback collection of Stephen King novels, Salem’s Lot. It plays out the story of what may have happened had Dracula gone to a small town in Maine at the end of the classic novel instead of London, as told through the eyes of different villagers.

The film adaptation is coming out soon, and Greg is excited to see the story on big screen. How is he celebrating?

“I’ve been having some really good tiramisu these last few months. I just can’t get it off my mind […].”

Until then, he’ll be focusing his attention on minutiae of clients’ cases and contributing to the collective goals and dedication of the team. After all, Dracula will always take a back seat to solving client problems.

“I’m just really thankful and glad [Cape Fear] gave me a chance, and I’m ready to work my hardest.”