[00:00:00] Jonathan Breeden: Hello and welcome to another edition of the Best of Johnston County Podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden. And on today’s episode, we have Johnson County Registrar of Deeds, Craig Olive.
[00:00:10] Jonathan Breeden: He’s going to talk to you a little bit about what his office does. How you can get your passport through his office, his Thank a Veteran program, and some of the stuff he does to help people avoid being victims of identity theft.
[00:00:24] Jonathan Breeden: I think you’re going to find this fascinating and interesting. Craig Olive is probably one of the most cutting-edge Register of Deeds in the entire country and he’s right here in Johnston County and I don’t think people realize it, which is why I wanted him to come on this podcast.
[00:00:40] Jonathan Breeden: But before we get to that, I want to remind everybody to like, follow, or subscribe to this podcast, wherever you see this podcast, whether it be on YouTube, LinkedIn, Apple, iTunes, Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, or any of the other social media pages of the Best of Johnston County Podcast.
[00:00:58] Jonathan Breeden: The Best of Johnston County Podcast comes [00:01:00] out every Monday, so be checking back every Monday for new episodes and go back and listen to some of the previous episodes when we’ve had interesting guests like County Commissioner Patrick Harris, Miss Teen America, Hanley House local dentist, Dr. Tim Sims, Johnston County Economic Development Director Chris Johnson now Johnston County Commissioner Bill Stovall.
[00:01:20] Jonathan Breeden: These are all interesting people that have a lot of great things to say about Johnston County, and I think you will find them educational.
[00:01:26] Jonathan Breeden: Thanks for coming on, Craig.
[00:01:27] Craig Olive: Thank you, Jonathan. It’s a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:29] Jonathan Breeden: I appreciate you doing this. So let’s start with biographical. Who you are, where are you from?
[00:01:35] Craig Olive: Well, I’m Craig Olive. I was born and raised here in Johnston County on a family farm. I’m 59 years young. I came from a big family. We had 15, well 14 siblings, 15 counting me. They’re all half except one whole sister. My daddy was a farmer. He also worked in the insurance business.
[00:01:56] Craig Olive: And at the age of 45, my mother went back and got [00:02:00] her nursing degree. And she was a nurse at Wake Med for about 15 years before she retired. And I went to Smithfield Selma High School, Graduate. At that time, I was moving up into the management there at Hardee’s in Smithfield. I worked there for about nine years.
[00:02:17] Craig Olive: And I kind of was tired of the working midnight shifts when somebody didn’t come in. Back then, we were 24 hours. So I fell into the opening of Driver’s License examiner. And I also worked in politics probably since I was 13 years old when Ronald Reagan was running he captivated a young boy’s mind and I got involved in politics and later on, I found, I became the chairman of the YRs. And my daddy died when I was 16.
[00:02:49] Craig Olive: And while I was a YR chairman, my mother found a newspaper clipping. My daddy didn’t ever tell me that he was involved in politics. He just told me, don’t put no bumper [00:03:00] stickers on this vehicle because somebody might egg him. And so he was YR chairman here in Johnston County back in the early 60s.
[00:03:09] Jonathan Breeden: Oh, my goodness. How about that? So YR stands for Young Republicans, and that is one of the many different Republican groups there are, there’s Republican men, there’s Republican women, there’s the general county Republican parties, and then there’s the congressional districts, and then there’s the state Republican party.
[00:03:26] Jonathan Breeden: And not all counties have young Republican branches. But I think it’s fascinating that Johnston County had one back in the sixties because in the sixties there weren’t a whole lot of Republicans in Johnston County.
[00:03:37] Craig Olive: Right. As I used to call it, we met in a phone booth.
[00:03:43] Jonathan Breeden: That’s probably about right.
[00:03:45] Jonathan Breeden: So when did you become a driver’s license examiner? That’s what you were doing when I met you.
[00:03:49] Craig Olive: In 1989, I became a driver’s license examiner for the state of North Carolina. I started out in Durham until I got transferred to a position that [00:04:00] was up in the Smithfields. I stayed there until the first driver’s license office was opened in Clayton, and I was the senior examiner there, and I stayed there until I decided I wanted to run for office.
[00:04:14] Craig Olive: Because I love history, I love Johnston County, and we’re like a museum in our office. We’re preserving history one page at a time.
[00:04:23] Jonathan Breeden: That you do and you have records going all the way back to the 1700s.
[00:04:27] Craig Olive: Yes sir.
[00:04:27] Jonathan Breeden: In that office. And I do find that fascinating when you go in there because it is kind of a history museum of the county.
[00:04:34] Jonathan Breeden: So, register deeds because you’re a historian?
[00:04:37] Craig Olive: Well, that’s the first thing. And then I saw there was a need for modern technology to be in that office. Everybody that uses that office has to go down, walk down there, or travel down to the courthouse and look up the records.
[00:04:52] Craig Olive: Nothing was online, and we need to put our records online to help the loggers [00:05:00] like yourself to look up pages, to find out things instead of traveling all the way down to the office. And also people that use our office is they charge the public by the hour most of the time.
[00:05:15] Craig Olive: So that helps out the public as well.
[00:05:18] Jonathan Breeden: Okay. So anyway, so you are elected in 2002.
[00:05:22] Craig Olive: Yes, sir.
[00:05:22] Jonathan Breeden: And you were the first Republican register of deeds that I was aware of, at least that I know of. And so you’ve been in that position now for 22 years.
[00:05:30] Craig Olive: Yes, sir.
[00:05:31] Jonathan Breeden: And so just tell the public what the register of deeds does.
[00:05:36] Jonathan Breeden: You know, we had a lot of people move from all over the country. You know, some states have registered wills, some states have registered deeds, some states just have clerks that are sort of responsible for it. So what in North Carolina does the Register of Deeds do?
[00:05:49] Craig Olive: The North Carolina Register of Deeds office, they host the land deeds, land records that somebody their deeds when they go buy a house, their deed of trust that they borrowed from the [00:06:00] bank any type of public input document you want to put on public record such as power attorneys.
[00:06:08] Jonathan Breeden: Separation agreements.
[00:06:09] Craig Olive: Yes.
[00:06:09] Jonathan Breeden: I report separation agreements at your office.
[00:06:12] Craig Olive: Yep. Separation power attorney. Anything that you want the public on public record, everything is public record except our military discharges and they’re in a safekeeping place away from the public.
[00:06:25] Jonathan Breeden: Okay.
[00:06:26] Craig Olive: And we also host the birth certificates that the birth that’s occurred here in Johnston County. Also death, any type of death that occurs here. And we also record marriage licenses when they come and get their marriage license. And they can get married anywhere in the state. And, as long as it is on North Carolina soil, so,
[00:06:49] Jonathan Breeden: I did not know that. I thought you had to get married in Johnston County if you got a Johnston County marriage license.
[00:06:55] Craig Olive: No, not now. I don’t know when the law changed, but when my parents got married in [00:07:00] 1959, they had to go come back to Johnston County and back then only the groom or the husband to be can come and get their marriage license.
[00:07:10] Jonathan Breeden: Huh?
[00:07:10] Craig Olive: Yeah. Yes. So, back then, they got a Wake County Pastor to marry them. So they had to come back across North Johnston County line and went to the first permanent Baptist Church that they saw and he got married by the Carlottes.
[00:07:25] Jonathan Breeden: Oh, how about that?
[00:07:26] Craig Olive: Also anybody, if they are an ordained minister. And as you know, people can go online and get the ordination. I don’t know if it’s legit or not, but that’s up to the courts. But we have over about 1,200 marriages per year in Joplin County. About 1,300 births take place here. And deaths, right close to about a thousand a year.
[00:07:50] Jonathan Breeden: Okay. I didn’t know that. I knew you were responsible for all those records, but I didn’t know those numbers, and people get married at the courthouse all the time.
[00:07:58] Craig Olive: I do.
[00:07:59] Jonathan Breeden: I go to the [00:08:00] courthouse and see people getting married and do you perform those ceremonies?
[00:08:03] Craig Olive: Well, unfortunately, we cannot.
[00:08:05] Jonathan Breeden: Okay.
[00:08:06] Craig Olive: By statute, we cannot. The magistrate over at the clerk’s office court system that they perform them or they can go off-site and let a Pastor to do it in a church or anywhere else as long as it’s in North Carolina store.
[00:08:21] Jonathan Breeden: Okay. How about that? So, what are your office hours?
[00:08:24] Craig Olive: We are open from eight until five, Monday through Friday but we are a 24-hour office because you can search online 24 hours a day for your records.
[00:08:37] Jonathan Breeden: Right and you’ve really been cutting edge on the digitizing of records and stuff. I mean, really for the entire country, I mean, it’s unbelievable. You know, I know you said you’re a historian, but how have you gone about doing that and becoming such a trailblazer at it?
[00:08:52] Craig Olive: Well, we have several millions of our records in our office. So, we started back to [00:09:00] the 1700s and we scan in our documents. Sometimes we would do it in-house. Sometimes we have to have a company out to outsource it. But we became a digitized office probably about in 20, 2005, 2006. So right after I took office.
[00:09:19] Craig Olive: I saw there was a need, there was a backlog of satisfactions back then, you have to pull the bullet and stamp it and it took a long time to counsel a debtor trust when we get the satisfaction from the Bank.
[00:09:36] Jonathan Breeden: Okay. I got you. And at the time, you may have been the first county in North Carolina to do that if I’m not mistaken. I mean right now it’s kind of everybody’s got it but like at that time, I mean nobody had.
[00:09:48] Craig Olive: We are one of the first that have went and have everything online for the public and the Lawyers to look at.
[00:09:56] Jonathan Breeden: Right. And now the lawyers can file online.
[00:09:59] Craig Olive: That’s right. They can [00:10:00] electronically file. We were the first in the nation for a plat map to be recorded electronically. I was very proud of that, we worked with a local surveyor and we were the first in the nation. So very proud of that.
[00:10:15] Jonathan Breeden: Right. Now I can’t request a marriage license online, can I?
[00:10:20] Craig Olive: You can apply for a marriage license online, and fill out all the information. And when you walk into our office, we will pull it up and let you sign it and let you go your merry way.
[00:10:31] Jonathan Breeden: But I have to go get it? I have to physically appear, right?
[00:10:35] Craig Olive: Both the bride and the groom.
[00:10:37] Jonathan Breeden: Right.
[00:10:37] Craig Olive: I will have to.
[00:10:38] Jonathan Breeden: Right. And can I request a death certificate online with your office?
[00:10:42] Craig Olive: You can.
[00:10:43] Jonathan Breeden: Okay.
[00:10:43] Craig Olive: You can order a death certificate, marriage license, and birth certificates online.
[00:10:48] Jonathan Breeden: Okay. Oh, that’s awesome.
[00:10:49] Craig Olive: And we can send it to you right in the mail.
[00:10:52] Jonathan Breeden: Okay, that’s awesome. And your office is unique in that. It’s created by statute but it’s largely [00:11:00] self-funded. I guess technically the county commissioners are sort of as far as the budget, but you usually bring in more money than you spend, I think.
[00:11:07] Craig Olive: We sure do. We take in about $8 million a year when the economy is good. Recently about 6 million a year, we even develop programs where we can make more money to help save the taxpayers their tax rate rate.
[00:11:24] Jonathan Breeden: Right. And you actually have given money back to the commissioners.
[00:11:28] Craig Olive: Yes, I’m proud to say since my tenure has started since 2002, we have returned back over $4 million of unused funds. So maybe that will help keep the tax rate down.
[00:11:43] Jonathan Breeden: Well, I tell you what, it’s better than the commissioners having to pump money into it to keep it up, ’cause we have to have a registered deed’s office by law.
[00:11:50] Craig Olive: Well, that’s true. We have to.
[00:11:52] Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well, let’s talk about some of the things that you do that are not absolutely required by law. One of the [00:12:00] things that your office is good for is helping people get passports. Explain to me how they would go about getting a passport for your office.
[00:12:07] Jonathan Breeden: I know I just got one for my children through your office. Just talk about what that process is.
[00:12:11] Craig Olive: Well, we enjoy having y’all in our office. Well, I saw there was a need to have a passport facility and I inquired about it and I think I would like the second one in the state to get it. Brunswick County was the first one, and I went down there and talked with the registrar down there, Brenda Clemons, and so I brought back some ideas and we started doing passports and we have really made a lot of money for the county.
[00:12:41] Craig Olive: We take pictures there right on the spot, only charge them $10. Some places might charge 17 or $20. So, that’s the cost saving to the taxpayers and we make about $35 off of each passport.
[00:12:58] Jonathan Breeden: Well, and the biggest [00:13:00] thing is, not just that it’s a revenue generator for your offices, it’s just a convenience.
[00:13:04] Craig Olive: Yeah.
[00:13:04] Jonathan Breeden: It is so convenient and so easy if you have your paperwork now, you gotta have your birth certificates, you gotta have both parents there if you want the kids, you know, there are some rules, but if you could follow the instructions. It is the easiest thing in the world.
[00:13:18] Jonathan Breeden: You’re in and out less than 15, 20 minutes. And you know, that’s just a great service. Like everything you seem to do is to provide service. You’re one of the first people to digitize. Now you’re making it where people can come get passports. You didn’t have to do that, but you’re doing that as a service to the community.
[00:13:33] Craig Olive: Well, I’m not just a sit-behind-a-desk type of person. I want to create or see ways I can help the public to better their life and to find other sources of revenue to bring into our office, like I said, to help keep our tax rate down.
[00:13:52] Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well, one of the things that you’ve done that you didn’t have to do, was you created a ThinkEvent program.[00:14:00]
[00:14:00] Craig Olive: I did.
[00:14:00] Jonathan Breeden: So, tell the people about that.
[00:14:02] Craig Olive: Well, the Veterans are very important to me. I had a brother that was in Vietnam and some old family members that was in service. But they fought for our country and we need to do anything possible to help their life easier after service.
[00:14:19] Craig Olive: And so, I saw there was a need to develop a program for the veterans because some area merchants offer discounts, but you have to show proof.
[00:14:31] Craig Olive: And if you serve four or eight years in service, the only proof you have that you are, that you served in the military, is your DD 214. And I am an advocate of trying to help protect people’s identity. So, usually the DD 214, they keep it in their wallet or their pocket, and as you know that it can be stolen or the DD214 is a very important document, it [00:15:00] can be stored and torn or whatever.
[00:15:04] Craig Olive: So, people can come and record their DD214s in our office and we will make a little card with a picture on it to show area merchants and we have over a hundred area merchants and businesses that provide discounts to our veterans.
[00:15:22] Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s awesome. And for those people who don’t know a DD214 is your discharge summary that has a lot of personal information on including your name, the first date of service, your last date of service, whether you were honorably discharged or generally discharged or dishonorably discharged and may have something depending on when it is, it sometimes can talk about any injuries you may have suffered.
[00:15:43] Craig Olive: Right.
[00:15:43] Jonathan Breeden: Those are things you might not want the public to know.
[00:15:46] Craig Olive: And your social security number is on it.
[00:15:48] Jonathan Breeden: And your social security number on it as well. And so, that’s big.
[00:15:51] Jonathan Breeden: So how many people have come and recorded their DD214? I know you just started this program about a year ago, but I mean, it’s fascinating.
[00:15:58] Craig Olive: We have over a thousand [00:16:00] that have come in.
[00:16:01] Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s awesome.
[00:16:01] Craig Olive: And we’re very proud of that program that we started.
[00:16:05] Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s awesome. Over a thousand veterans. That is great.
[00:16:08] Jonathan Breeden: And then their families will know how to access those as well if they lost it being a family lawyer, we do a lot of cases of the military and sometimes it’s one of the things we’re asking for.
[00:16:20] Jonathan Breeden: And some service members don’t know where it is. And it’s like, well, we got to get it because it was good and we’re going to need it to help us with the divorce and the property settlement.
[00:16:27] Craig Olive: And also, when that time comes when you want a military funeral, and you don’t have a copy of a DD214 to show proof that you were in the military, you may delay the funeral or may not be able to have one.
[00:16:40] Craig Olive: So we have a lot of funeral homes to call us and to acknowledge that they were in the military.
[00:16:47] Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s cool. I know you’ve really been big on identity theft. That has been the calling, you know, other than digitizing the office. When you think of Craig Olive, you think of the shred events that [00:17:00] you have every year where you pay for a gigantic 18-wheeler shredder to come to a parking lot at Smithfield and people can come and have anything they want shredded, free of charge.
[00:17:10] Jonathan Breeden: You’ve done that, what, nine, 10 years now?
[00:17:13] Craig Olive: This was the 15th year.
[00:17:15] Jonathan Breeden: 15th year of doing that. You usually do it in the spring.
[00:17:18] Craig Olive: Right.
[00:17:19] Jonathan Breeden: I have participated there many times. And that’s a tremendous event. It’s usually in April?
[00:17:24] Craig Olive: April or May around tax time. When people are cleaning out their files and wanting to throw them away they don’t have to keep no longer.
[00:17:36] Jonathan Breeden: Right. I normally go and take a bunch of old checkbooks. You know what I mean? I have just the carbon copies and I have you shred those. That’s one of the things that I like to do every year at your event.
[00:17:48] Craig Olive: One of the reasons why I started that was, there was a law on the books that several years back when you had your deed done you had to put your social [00:18:00] security number on the deed.
[00:18:01] Craig Olive: And, as you know, these are public records. And even though they might be online, people can still come into our office and open up the book and see a social security number. And that’s dangerous.
[00:18:15] Craig Olive: And, there was a law on the books that the public had to tell us what book and what page it was in. And a lot of people didn’t know that their Social Security number was on their documents that was recorded in our office.
[00:18:30] Craig Olive: So, I took a step further when Congressman David Rausser was our Senator here in Raleigh location. Helped introduce a bill that the registrar of deeds will have to go on and cover up people’s social security numbers or sensitive information. And by technology that we have, technology can go and spot the numbers automatically and cover them up.
[00:18:55] Craig Olive: So that was the extra step that I wanted to have done. And [00:19:00] then Governor Beverly Perdue signed it into law. I’m very proud of bringing that to the forefront and making it a law.
[00:19:09] Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s awesome. The other thing you try to do is you got a fraud alert thing. I mean, like, what are you doing for that?
[00:19:15] Craig Olive: Well, right here, I brought this, it’s a fraud alert. My software vendor offers a fraud alert, and if you want to be alerted, if somebody records anything in your name in our office, and we cannot examine every document to tell if it’s authentic or a fraud. But we do record people’s names, and index people’s names.
[00:19:41] Craig Olive: And so, if somebody brings in a document with your name on it and you didn’t know nothing about it, we’ll alert you through an email and I encourage everyone to sign up. It’s very, very important.
[00:19:55] Jonathan Breeden: And there’s a link on your website.
[00:19:56] Craig Olive: Link on my website hcrd. org.
[00:19:58] Jonathan Breeden: J C
[00:19:59] Craig Olive: R O [00:20:00] D. Org.
[00:20:01] Jonathan Breeden: J C R O D dot org, which stands for johnsoncountyregistered. org. You can go in there and sign up for free for a front alert to see if somebody records your name.
[00:20:10] Jonathan Breeden: One of the things you’ve seen around the country is this whole squatting thing and people following false, people getting quick claim deeds where people are deeding an interest in a property that they don’t have. And then that’s getting recorded.
[00:20:26] Jonathan Breeden: So people think they own a property, they don’t, and then they won’t get out of your house. I mean, it’s just a big fraud.
[00:20:31] Craig Olive: As long as if they bring in a document, as long as they meet our recording standards. We have to take it. Don’t matter what is inside of the body of the document.
[00:20:42] Jonathan Breeden: Okay. So you don’t get to say whether you think it’s a fraud or not.
[00:20:45] Craig Olive: A fraud. We’ll let the court system do that.
[00:20:47] Jonathan Breeden: Right. You’re just recording it if it’s got a three-inch top and a one-inch margin, they’ll pay the fee. You have to record it.
[00:20:54] Craig Olive: That’s right.
[00:20:54] Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s right. And that’s why literally you can record just about anything you want [00:21:00] with the registered deeds, including your separation agreement, or even a memorandum of separation, letting the creditors know that you’re separated.
[00:21:06] Jonathan Breeden: We do that here at my office every once in a while for people that are going through separation and divorces, and they want to make sure that the creditors are aware not to give the other party credit in their name because they are now separated, headed for a divorce.
[00:21:22] Jonathan Breeden: So I guess the last question we ask everybody on this podcast is what do you love most about Johnston County?
[00:21:27] Jonathan Breeden: You’ve been here your whole life. You’ve been an elected official for 22 years. What do you love most?
[00:21:32] Craig Olive: I love serving people. I love helping people. And as long as I’m in that office, I will continue to look at ways to make things easier. I will fight for fee increases, and I have done that against our own association. And I would like to thank them, the black sheep of the family.
[00:21:53] Craig Olive: But when it comes to fee increases and all that, we don’t have to need that and it does affect [00:22:00] all types of people, low income and high income. I’m here to serve the citizens of this county and this state, and I love serving.
[00:22:08] Jonathan Breeden: All right. Well, and you’re not up for reelection this year. I know we’re in an election year. Registered Deeds are elected in North Carolina in the off-presidential year. So you’ll be back up in 2026. I don’t know if you might be running again. It sounds like you might be.
[00:22:22] Craig Olive: Oh, I am. I love serving the citizens. Hey, 24 registrars are off in the off-year election.
[00:22:29] Jonathan Breeden: Oh, I didn’t know that.
[00:22:30] Craig Olive: And the rest is up for this year.
[00:22:33] Jonathan Breeden: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was like the clerk of courts and the DAs where they were all in the off-year election. I didn’t know that.
[00:22:39] Jonathan Breeden: So, well, thanks for that. I know you’re in the off-year.
[00:22:41] Craig Olive: Well, I’m glad I’m in the off year.
[00:22:43] Jonathan Breeden: You’re kind of glad you’re in the off year. So.
[00:22:44] Craig Olive: Yeah.
[00:22:44] Jonathan Breeden: So come 2026, it sounds like you’re going to run again. Well, we’d like to thank Craig Olive, the Johnston County Register of Deeds for being our guest today on the Best of Johnson County podcast.
[00:22:54] Jonathan Breeden: As we mentioned earlier, please like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re seeing it. So you’ll be made [00:23:00] aware of future episodes of the Best of Johnston County podcast.
[00:23:02] Jonathan Breeden: And if you’d be so kind to leave us a five-star review down at the bottom, whether you’re seeing this podcast or not, and maybe give us some comments about what you like, we’d or don’t like about this podcast.
[00:23:11] Jonathan Breeden: We do read them all and we want to continue to make it better because this podcast is for you. It is to promote what is great about Johnston County and what Craig Olive and I love the most about Johnston County and we love doing it here, bringing it to you from the Breeden Law Office.
[00:23:24] Jonathan Breeden: Until next time, I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden.
