George Real Estate Group Radio Broadcast

How A Recovery Court Changes Lives

• George Real Estate Group

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Real change shows up where stress goes down and support shows up. We open with a grounded look at Henderson County’s steady real estate market—why a calmer pace gives buyers and sellers breathing room, how pre-inspections and strong pre-approvals prevent last-minute chaos, and what full-service guidance looks like when an agency handles more than forms. Then we pivot to a different kind of structure changing lives: Adult Recovery Court, a therapeutic, voluntary path for people with felony charges tied to addiction. Instead of cycling through jail, participants commit to 18–24 months of treatment, accountability, and regular check-ins with a team that includes the judge, defense, prosecution, probation, health providers, and recovery supports.

We dig into the program’s origin story, funded by North Carolina’s opioid settlement dollars and built by county leaders who did the homework on gaps, barriers, and best practices. The results are compelling: reduced incarceration costs, higher employment, families reunited, child support paid, and far fewer crises landing back on public systems. Along the way, we share how simple incentives—like donated gift cards—fuel momentum, why caseload caps protect quality, and how other counties can replicate the model. The heart of it all is Jennifer, the first graduate: a full-time manager and single mom of three who completed 19 months of rigorous requirements and proved that recovery with accountability works.

If you care about smart justice, community health, and practical steps that make hard things easier—whether that’s buying a home or rebuilding a life—you’ll find data, details, and hope here. Want to help? Donate small incentives, hire graduates, spread the word, and advocate for programs that turn courtrooms into launchpads. For real estate questions or a private showing, call 828 393 0134 or visit realestatebygreg.com. If this conversation moves you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more neighbors can find it.

SPEAKER_02:

The George Real Estate Group Radio broadcast is celebrating 10 years on WHKP. The George Real Estate Group is celebrating 10 years on the radio live every Thursday morning at 10.05 on WHKP 107.7 FM and AM 1450, and streaming online at WHKP.com. Each Friday morning at 845, the George Real Estate Group presents the Hometown Hero Award to someone in our community who goes above and beyond to make our hometown a better place to live. Here's this week's Hometown Hero Show. It's 845, and that is every Friday morning we gather for the George Real Estate Group Hometown Hero series. Every Friday morning, and uh this morning we're gonna welcome Daniel Conway with uh the uh Henderson County Adult Recovery Court to the microphones. But first, Taylor Harry's here, and we're gonna talk a little real estate, right, Taylor?

SPEAKER_05:

That's right. We are always talking real estate before we get to the good stuff, which today happens to be Mr. Daniel over here. So here in Henderson County, we have been saying for the past few weeks that the market is steady and it's stable. And what that allows for is for sellers and buyers not to be in as big of a rush. It allows for an actual relationship, it allows for time to make sure that everybody has their ducks in a row and the stress goes away. And as I spoke about yesterday, we had an amazing speaker come in and and talk to us about and really lay out the importance of pre-inspections and approvals so that when you get to the end, everything's not falling apart. And, you know, that's the main benefit of having an agency like the George Real Estate Group. And you know, we're not the only ones, we're not gonna sit here and it be greedy about it, but we can absolutely say that we provide a lot of services beyond just buying and selling. It's not just filling out papers, it's making sure that you're equipped with financers and and appraisers and everything that you need to make sure that you're either when you're buying or selling, you have all the information you need and that it's genuine and nobody's taking you for a ride. And that's that's why I like working there.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, get us uh Taylor, get us in touch with the George Real Estate Group. Where are you guys at?

SPEAKER_05:

We are located in Flat Rock. If you know where Rainbow Row is at, across from Carl Sandberg, or where the very dangerous flat rock bakery or hubba hub are at, we are right there. Our phone number is 828-393-0134. You can call us anytime. And if there is any property you want to look at, even if there's not a listed open house or anything like that, you can call and request a private showing, and you absolutely should. And if you have any questions about anything at all, we'd love to help you.

SPEAKER_02:

Super. Thank you, Taylor. Daniel Conway with uh Henderson County Adult Recovery Court. Good morning.

SPEAKER_03:

Hey, good morning, everybody. Uh, first I want to say thank you so much for inviting us here to speak with you guys, and thank you so much to the George Real Estate Group uh for the hometown Hero Salute. We appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, Daniel, thank you for coming in to uh talk about this uh wonderful program. And it recently uh caught uh jumped up on my radar uh when you had a recent graduate from the program. I guess uh we'll talk about that graduate in a minute, but first of all, tell us about the program and and what uh the adult recovery court is.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh yes, so the adult recovery court is a drug diversion program. Um it's what's called a treatment court or a therapeutic court. So what we do is we look to address the underlying issues that an individual might have uh that is causing them to get involved with criminal behavior in the justice system.

SPEAKER_05:

Is that a voluntary? How does that work? How does someone get involved with that?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, ma'am, there's a voluntary program. Um so they do have to have at least one felony charge uh up to class F. It does not have to be a drug charge, it can be anything that is a consequence of their addiction.

SPEAKER_05:

Um, okay. So you're you're helping people well beyond just people who've been charged with felonies for drug possession or whatever. That's is anyone that has a felony that's sort of a result of that lifestyle. Yes, ma'am. That's incredible.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much. How long does the program run? How long does a person get involved in this court?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh so once they plead in, it's a minimum of 18 months, but it usually takes about up to about two years for somebody to complete it. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's uh quite in-depth, I I I would imagine. How often during that two in that two-year period, how often do you get together with these uh with these folks?

SPEAKER_03:

Um, so we have a pretty big treatment team that includes the judge, uh, the public defender's office, the district attorney's office, probation parole, and then we have a lot of community partners uh such as nonprofits and treatment providers that we work with. So I'd say if you're speaking of all our treatment team, they see we see everybody probably at least three or four times a week.

SPEAKER_05:

That's an inc that's incredible. I I did not know this existed until today, to be honest with you. That's amazing. To have I mean, obviously people go through things in life and sometimes you get hit with something with a major charge because you made a really big bad decision and it affects the rest of your life. I did not know that this resource existed. So how like how are people finding you? If someone is coming to your program, how do people find you? How do they get this?

SPEAKER_03:

A lot of times through their attorney. The referral process does go through their attorney. Um so a lot of times their attorney already knows about it. So when they're uh discussing um options with their client, they might bring it up to them. Sometimes we'll do some in-reach in the jail or do outreach on the community, uh, just to make sure everybody's uh educated and aware of this program.

SPEAKER_02:

How many people, Daniel, do you have uh involved in this court? I mean how many uh how many people are uh are working with you?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh working with us on a treatment team, I think it's about fifteen, twelve to fifteen.

SPEAKER_02:

And and uh and how many people are going through the program?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh currently we have seventeen and we actually just picked up our eighteenth. So we're at eighteen now and we're looking to be about twenty-twenty-five at the most.

SPEAKER_05:

To participate in this program, like as someone that is a volunteer provider, do you have to be someone that's certified? And do you have to be an attorney? Do you have to be someone in the legal field or mental health field, or can you just volunteer?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh we do have volunteers that help out. Um, our core treatment team is basically people from the legal system, uh, the healthcare system, and then also what we call recovery support services.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, uh one of the things that uh I wanted to ask is uh I wanted to ask of Jody Grabowski, who's here. Jody, good morning.

SPEAKER_04:

Hey Randy.

SPEAKER_02:

How are you?

SPEAKER_04:

I'm good, thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Good, good to have you here. You uh uh you can tell us more about uh the the origins of this program, how it got started.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, so um back in several years ago, um Commissioner Lapsley started a task force um looking at the opioid crisis, how it was impacting Henderson County. And fortunately he did that a long time ago because when the opioid settlement funds came down from the state um a few years ago, we were already primed with um knowing what our gaps and barriers were, what are what we wanted. So um when we knew we were getting the money, we started looking at how the money was, what was allowable with that money, what we could do with it. We're getting roughly a million dollars a year to the county over about 16 years. And one of the first things that we identified was a recovery court, also called problem-solving courts. Um we had looked at maybe a veterans court, um, and we landed on adult recovery court because it's broader, and we can refer. Daniel's actually a graduate from a veterans recovery court, and so he's well connected with the Bunkham County court. So if we have veterans that qualify, we can refer to them. Meanwhile, we decided to go forward with a adult recovery court, found out what that would entail as far as creating the um disciplinary team. So the judge, the DA, um, our lead defense, um, probation, all these folks gathered together and said, okay, let's let's get this started. And then we recruited Daniel away from Bunkham. And I apologize to the case. I don't blame you. I don't blame you for that. We we literally recruited him while he was at a conference on their dime. But it was a smart move. It was a smart move. So our um commissioners, this is what they wanted to do first. So um we um went through what we need to do to um uh be able to utilize those funds to fully um we're we're the first county in h in North Carolina to fully fund a recovery court with opioid settlement funds. Yes. It's um it's difficult to get state money for these courts. Um I wish that we could do that more. I think they're getting obviously more and more popular. Um when you look at um, you know, you hear about 17, 18, 20 people. It doesn't sound like a lot, but the impact is tremendous.

SPEAKER_05:

That's hundreds of people in those families. And yeah, the tree is and then his impact. And that's incredible. I mean, my dad was a little bit of a wild hair, and he was like, you know, it's everybody falls short and has their moment of whatever, and unfortunately, some people get caught in the middle of it. And there's a lot of people that do the same thing, but then there's people that pay the price, and it's it's incredible. People like Daniel in this program are like, guess what? This blemish or whatever that everybody sees on your record actually is, you know, we we all go through stuff like this, and now you've turned this thing into and you have helped turn this into something in c I mean, this is awesome.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, and what's cool is um what we can do with the OK settlement funds is we're so if somebody doesn't um qualify for this program, Daniel has other people on our team and other community members that he can refer them to. But the folks that are in this program would otherwise be looking at prison time, and some of them have very long time in prison. So when you look at um at our one-year mark, we had 12 people, and I did the math on that, and just by not having 12 people in prison for a year cost more than$660,000. And our c our program costs significantly less than$660,000. And that's just the what the state would be have paying for them to be in prison. So now not only are they not in prison, they're working. Um all but twelve, I mean, of that twelve, all but two were working. Uh one was in residential treatment and the other one's expecting a baby any day.

SPEAKER_05:

And it's funny because it's easy to say, like, we save money and that's the quantifiable number on paper, but that's actually the way lesser impact, right? Right, right. Those people actually get to live a life. Yeah. All those family. Yeah, you get to save money, but those people get to live a life. They show that recovery is possible.

SPEAKER_04:

They they model that for their family members. Um, so their family members get into treatment. Um, shoot, they're paying restitution, they're paying child support, they're um no longer DSS involved. So the like I said, the trickle down of a program like this is is tremendous. We could not have done this without the support of our county commissioners. Our county manager John Mitchell drove this. Um we literally drove around the state to look at other programs, and um it, you know, our our DA and probation, it's a big lift for them. So we really appreciate that they start to do that.

SPEAKER_05:

How do we make it bigger? How do we make it better?

SPEAKER_04:

Well, the it's it'll it'll continue to grow and we can influence other counties. Other counties are looking at the great work that Daniel's doing. And um hopefully the you know, more and more systems will see the benefit of this and and fund them because this money's not gonna last forever. And I want to put this in the back of the phone.

SPEAKER_05:

That's not true. I I've I have to say, sitting here today, there is no way that if enough people hear this and get involved that that that money is gonna go away. There are gonna be people that will advocate for you because I've known Daniel for all of five minutes, and I will volunteer just to get you more money. You know, it's I there I cannot believe that this program will not sustain itself.

SPEAKER_04:

I I think it will. And I think also when you're asking about volunteers, I think one of the way community members can help us is the funny thing about the money coming to a county is there's things that are allowable with the money, but not really doable as a county. And one of the hardest things for us is getting incentive prizes because we want to incentivize good behavior. So every time they come to court, the participants, if they've done well, can drop them a bucket and get like a prize. And that's just part of like what's best practice. But I literally can't buy gift cards as a county employee. Okay. So it's hard to get county. So anybody wants to donate gift cards to us, that's the one the coolest thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, we've got a yeah, we've got a couple of certificates that uh for free meals around town that can go in there. Uh we've only got a couple of minutes left, but in that couple of minutes, Jody, please tell us uh about the recent graduate, the first graduate of the program.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay. I'm gonna turn it back over to Daniel to talk about her because um he knows her better than any of us.

SPEAKER_02:

All right, Daniel, tell us about that graduate.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh yes, sir. So our graduate name's Jennifer. Um she did outstanding and very hard work um to be the very first person in our recovery court. So just the courage to be the first one to take those those steps and um really be the trailblazer for our court. Um she spent 19 months with us and she worked very hard as a full-time employee, uh manager, a single mother of three, um, taking care of her family and working full-time, all while also adhering and you know, going with all the requirements for our recovery court.

SPEAKER_02:

So you recently celebrated her at a luncheon at the historic courthouse. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_03:

We had a graduation ceremony for you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I can't say thank you enough to Jody and and uh Daniel and all the crew and everyone involved. It's a lot of people. And it's a great program, and we just wanted to uh shine a light on some of the good things going on in our community with the George Real Estate Group Hometown Hero Series. Uh Taylor, we got about uh 30 seconds for you to give uh Daniel the certificate and uh to to remind us about George Real Estate Group.

SPEAKER_05:

So we always give this certificate, and Randy and WHKP generously donate, you know, some free items around town that they can go and cash in, which is incredible. And the George Real Estate Group supports this program because of what it means to the community and because of how it is just it is the lifeblood of my favorite day is Friday morning when I get to come and meet the hometown heroes. And normally it's Noah here who is way more articulate than I am, but I always am happy to be here. So we really appreciate you guys and Randy, you too.

SPEAKER_02:

You bet. Join us next Friday, next Friday morning for another George Real Estate Group, Hometown Hero. The George Real Estate Group is located in Flat Rock, North Carolina, near Hendersonville in Henderson County. You can find them online at realestatebygreg.com. The George Real Estate Group can be reached at 828-3930134 or stop by their office at 2720 Greenville Highway, Flat Rock, North Carolina. Tune in live each week on Thursdays at 1005 AM on WHKP 107.7 FM and 1450 AM, or stream online at WHKP.com, or download these podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. The George Real Estate Group brings you the WHKP Hometown Hero Series every Friday morning at 845.

SPEAKER_00:

You've built a lifetime of strength, wisdom, and independence. And here's the best part. You still have it. Every decision, every step, every next chapter is yours to choose. Selling your home isn't about letting go, it's about opening the door to more freedom, more time for what you love, more energy for the people and passions that matter most. At the George Real Estate Group, we believe independence isn't behind you. It's right here, right now. Our team goes beyond buying and selling. We're here to help you protect your wealth, preserve your legacy, and make sure Uncle Sam doesn't become your biggest benefactor. We'll guide you every step of the way towards your next chapter, your next opportunity, and your freedom on your terms. Call us at 828 393 0134. Find us online at realestatebygreg.com.