Interview by Bea Lueck
GRANDE LIVING: Tell me a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, where you went to school and what brought you to Casa Grande.
Kelly Herrington: We moved around a lot as a kid because of my dad’s work. I was born in Van Nuys, California but lived there for probably less than a year. I went from California to Seattle, to Boise, Idaho; Parker, Colorado to St. Louis, Missouri; and then finally, to Arizona. I finished high school in the Paradise Valley area. I was tired of moving around and decided to stay in state for college. I chose the University of Arizona because ASU was too close to home and Flagstaff was too cold! I graduated with a degree in marketing at the Eller College of Business, with a minor in Spanish.
I was fortunate to study abroad one summer and lived with a family in Spain to finish my minor. After college, I got a job with Anheuser-Busch and moved to California. It was fun to live by the beach, but it was also very expensive. I ended up moving back to Arizona working for the beer distributor down in Tucson
GRANDE LIVING: Where did you meet your husband, Matt?
Kelly Herrington: Matt was working for Golden Eagle Distributors as well. He was in their marketing department; I was in sales. The owner of the company actually introduced us, “Hey, I think you guys would get along.”
GRANDE LIVING: What brought you to Casa Grande?
Kelly Herrington: Matt was getting promoted within Golden Eagle to become a branch manager in Flagstaff. I specifically remember the phone call as I was driving back from Phoenix to Tucson. As I was passing Casa Grande. Matt calls says, “There’s been a change.” I’m like, “What do you mean there’s been a change?” He said, “Instead of Flagstaff, we’re going to Casa Grande,” and I started bawling on the freeway, as I’m passing Casa Grande. My parents lived here. It was a great community. But the allure of being in the mountains was a little more interesting than flatland in between Phoenix and Tucson.
After I got over the initial shock, we embraced it. At that time, our kids were really little. When I was working we had to hire a nanny to watch them as it was cheaper than sending both to daycare. It was horrible working fulltime in a job that didn’t have very much flexibility. The cost of living in Casa Grande was a lot less than Tucson, so I was fortunate that I could quit my job. I tried the stay-at-home mom thing, and it worked out for a couple months. I love my kids, but I realized that I needed something else.
The point of breaking was when I had a schedule of which days I was going to clean the bathrooms, which days I was going to mop the floors and vacuum. It was a very detailed schedule, and I realized that that is not for me. The Realtor who helped us find the house mentioned, “Hey, have you ever thought about getting into real estate?” I had thought of it but never had the time or the money to go back to school to do it. Now that I wasn’t working I decided now’s a good time. I thought I’ll dabble in and I’ll do it part-time. I signed up for the classes and did the two-week crash course at the Arizona School of Real Estate and Business.
After passing the exams, I thought I’d do it part time, ended up getting busy with it right away. It became a lifestyle, a passion for me. I never knew there was life past the beer business until I got into real estate, and now, I don’t think there’s any life past real estate because it’s fun. It’s a different type of enjoyment and fulfillment of helping people with one of their biggest life occurrences. I’ve made a lot of friends along the way. I approach real estate like I did when I was in the beer business because that was a very corporate world. I don’t just sit at home in the mornings and lollygag. I drop the kids off at school, come into the office first thing, focus on business during the day, and then when it’s time to do kids activities or home life, then go tackle those.
GRANDE LIVING: It is very much of mindset.
Kelly Herrington: It is. People don’t realize this is a career, it’s not a hobby. You get in the mindset of getting up, getting dressed and going to work, whether you’re going to a home office or an off-site office. You have to have that self-discipline in this business. No one’s going to hold your hand and tell you, “Hey, you need to get up and show up at the office.” I create my schedule every day on what I need to do. Some days I get all of my tasks done, and other days I just keep adding to my list because you’re busy.
GRANDE LIVING: It’s a matter of staying organized, keeping lists, your to-do lists.
Besides your real estate career, you have several extracurricular items on your resume including school board. What made you decide to run for school board?
Kelly Herrington: I’m involved in a lot of things in the community. I think I was at a chamber event one evening and the superintendent at the time approached me saying, “Have you ever thought about … ?” I said, “Nope, never crossed my mind honestly.” He’s continued, “Most of the people on the board right now, their kids are grown up. We need someone that doesn’t have a hidden agenda, that just wants to do it for the betterment of our community and for the kids.” I didn’t really think twice about it. I had a couple friends tell me, “Are you crazy? Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?” I said, “No, I don’t, but I think it’s the right thing to do,” so I ran and got elected. I do the school board; I am a member of the Rotary of Casa Grande; I do a lot for the Boys and Girls Clubs, but I’m not on their board. I just help promote and support them.
GRANDE LIVING: Speaking of the Boys and Girls Clubs, you have a commitment to them coming up in 2023 as a celebrity dancer.
Kelly Herrington: I told them when they approached me, I said, “I don’t know. I’m probably your B-list celebrity, but I guess if you think I’m a celebrity, sure.” They approached me and wanted to know if I wanted to dance.
GRANDE LIVING: Have you selected your genre yet?
Kelly Herrington: I have.
GRANDE LIVING: Can you announce it or is it still a secret?
Kelly Herrington: No, it’s still a secret. It’s going to be in Maricopa this year. Half of the dancers are Casa Grande and half are Maricopa, with a couple of dance studios from each community. It’s one of their biggest fundraisers for the Boys and Girls Clubs and all the funds stays local.
GRANDE LIVING: In addition to those, your children are very active in sports and school and such.
Kelly Herrington: Yes, Dillan is a star soccer player on her middle school team and also for the city team. She’s very involved in dance as well. She’s in junior company for The Studio and also takes four other dance classes that I have to shuttle her to. Thank goodness for our parent community and the dance moms, because we all help each other out. Otherwise, I don’t know how we’d do it all.
Connor, he plays tackle football for the Krush league, and he’s been loving that. Right now, we have a nice little break of few activities compared to most of the year.
GRANDE LIVING: You’ve done a lot with the area Realtor associations. You served on what was the Western Pinal Association of Realtors, WPAR, prior to the merger with West Valley Association of Realtors – WeMar.
Kelly Herrington: Yes. I wanted to meet not just people within my current brokerage, but other Realtors in the community. I started with WPAR as a member at large, then treasurer. The president at the time and I were discussing fundraising and finances with our accountant and how we were going to pay the bills.
That’s when we discussed the option of merging with WeMAR. We liked their culture, it meshed with ours. Soon after it was official, the South & East Valley Association of Realtors – Sevrar, started talking about a merger. That merger created WeServ. One of the conditions of the mergers was keeping a presence in Pinal County. It was very important to us was to maintain our own identity and our community. We have a local council. They’re very involved in the community. Several agents from Coldwell Banker ROX Realty are active in the Pinal Chapter. I help with the golf tournament and co-chairs on the memorial run. (Formerly Russell’s Run)
GRANDE LIVING: You spoke about the committees and involvement. In 2022, several agents from Coldwell Banker ROX Realty were recognized by the Pinal chapter, and yourself, with the state chapter. Tell us about those accolades.
Kelly Herrington: I think it just really goes to show how involved our agents are and how much we love our community. It just makes my heart happy to see all of that hard work and commitment to getting involved and giving back. I think our office has some of the most involved agents of any of the offices around. We all work together, we collaborate. In the last few months, Annalisa Tapia was recognized as a Community Leader for Pinal. Yzmira Andujo was recognized as one of the top three for the Greatest of the Grande for Best Realtor. Erin Dugan was recognized as the Realtor of the Year for our Pinal chapter, which is amazing. And just a couple of weeks ago, I was awarded Realtor of the Year for the entire WeSERV organization, which is crazy.
GRANDE LIVING: WeSERV is the largest Realtor association in Arizona with, what, 25,000 members? I’m not sure the number, but it’s a lot!
Kelly Herrington: I think right around there, I’m not sure. Just the fact that in an organization that big, someone recognized me and nominated me and then to be voted Realtor of the Year, it’s an incredible honor.
GRANDE LIVING: What does that say about the culture within the Coldwell Banker ROX Realty office to have so many agents recognized by other individuals?
Kelly Herrington: It shows we’re out there, doing things together. We all have each other’s backs. We don’t compete against each other, we root each other on. I think it shows that other people see it too, that we just want to make a positive impact on society. People recognize it, which is kind of cool.
GRANDE LIVING: There is another competition that you are involved in at the moment. I haven’t seen the results yet, and that was the Christmas light tour here in Casa Grande with decorating your house. How did that tradition start, doing the duct tape mural?
Kelly Herrington: It started when we lived in the Winterhaven residential area of Tucson. It’s one of the Christmas capitals of Arizona, people come from all over. I didn’t really know anything about it. I had moved in with Matt and he’s shared, “I live in Winterhaven and it’s a big Christmas thing.” Our first year, he borrowed a plastic Clydesdale from work, wrapped some lights around it and put it in the yard.
GRANDE LIVING: That sounds kind of lame.
Kelly Herrington: Really lame, but everybody loved the Clydesdale. Then the next year, we thought we should probably up our game a little bit. Little by little, it just started growing. We talked about moving. Our house was small two bedroom, one bath, little tiny place with a carport that was built in the ’50s. We ended up adding on and built a garage. Not many houses in Winterhaven have garages, they have carports. I was like, you know what?
They have all these decorating categories in Winterhaven, so you can win bragging right awards. You don’t win actual money, you just win bragging rights. One of the categories was Best Door. I announced I’m going to go for Best Door, and it’s not our front door. It’s going to be our garage door. It’s different and something no one else would do. The very first year I wrapped it like a present. It bought one of those plastic picnic tablecloths that had Christmasy decorations. It looked like wrapping paper, but it was more durable. Put those on the panels, put a big bow on it, called it done. No one really got it.
GRANDE LIVING: You did not win an award for that one.
Kelly Herrington: No. I didn’t win an award on that. The next year, I’m like, everyone’s doing themes, so let’s do a theme. We did Nightmare Before Christmas. I thought it was really cool. I loved the movie. I loved Jack Skeleton and thought it was fun. It was Christmas Town, Halloween Town. I decided to make a mural. I wanted to paint something. but I’m not a very good painter. I needed something waterproof, and one day the idea dawned on me. Duct tape is waterproof. There’s a million colors of duct tape, so I’ll make a mural out of duct tape and so I did. It was a crazy hairbrained idea. Matt is always supportive. He kind of stepped back.
GRANDE LIVING: Smart man.
Kelly Herrington: Yeah, I’d yell at his technique, and it’s better if he just lets me do it, so he does. The first year, it was the Nightmare Before Christmas, had the giant moon, had the Jack on the moon, and then half of it was Christmas Town, half was Halloween Town, and then we decorated our yard. It was the first year we went all out and people liked it. But they didn’t really get it.
GRANDE LIVING: Still no award.
Kelly Herrington: Still no award. They didn’t get it. This is Christmas. Why do you have Halloween stuff up? They didn’t get it. The next year, I’m like, OK, fine, we’ll do Elf. Elf is very festive, very Christmas-y, so we did Elf, and I finally won an award. We didn’t get Best Door. After all this, we never won Best Door. We got one of the bigger awards for our yard, but still never best door. We got the President’s award, so that was actually kind of cool.
Our first house in Casa Grande had a standard garage door. My Elf thing wasn’t going to fit on a standard garage door, so I was forced to make a new one. It kind of evolved and now we’re pretty much expected to have a different theme every year. It would be so much easier if I could just grow upon one theme, but it’s also exciting because people ask, what theme are you going to do? I feel like I’m running out of themes, so if anyone has any ideas please share. I’ll gladly take new theme ideas.
GRANDE LIVING: Kelly needs to set up a GoFundMe for duct tape.
Kelly Herrington: It’s true! Not so fun fact, Michael’s doesn’t sell duct tape anymore. Walmart still carries it but limited colors and I’ve had to resort to Amazon. Sorry, dad, I know. I try to shop local. That’s how it’s morphed into what it is today. I’m this crazy girl who makes murals out of duct tape.
I usually start in October so we can have it up at the end of November. This year, I was a little bit late. It ultimately consumes my evenings. After dinner, I’ll go lay it out. This year, I was lucky I could do it in the garage, so I could work on it as late as I wanted. Sometimes if I have it outside, I have to abide by the sunlight. Weekends and nights are consumed by working on it. It is a family project. Everyone comes to help.
GRANDE LIVING: Any ideas what you are looking for in your future? Obviously, real estate will be your focus, but any ideas on other aspirations or organizations or wish list? I really wanted to do fill in the blank but haven’t yet.
Kelly Herrington: I’m always up for trying to come up with some fun new trips. We’re kind of boring. One big aspiration is a house in Pinetop. That is a dream of mine. Our normal trips consist of driving to California to visit the beach or going up to Pinetop. You kind of get to that point when you realize life is short and you don’t really want to spend it worrying about a lot of the day-to-day stuff. Quality time with family becomes increasingly important. I try not to worry about the little stuff. It’s hard not to, but I tell my kids and my family, “Don’t let little problems consume you.” There are bigger problems in the world and we are very fortunate for what we have, and I try to remind myself about that daily.
