Every year, a Realtor in North Carolina receives the Ben Ball Community Service Award from the North Carolina Association of Realtors. For the first time since the award’s inception in 1983, a Wilmington Realtor received the recognition. Intracoastal Realty’s Deb Hays received the award for her community service work at the association’s annual convention last month.

Hays has served as a commissioner on the Wilmington Housing Authority for the past five years, including serving as chairman for the past two years. She currently serves on the Azalea Festival Board of Directors leading two committees. She recently participated in a mission trip to Guatemala through First Baptist Church. She served as the president of the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors in 2006, was a member of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Advisors and is a graduate of Leadership Wilmington.

“No one is more deserving of this award than Deb Hays,” said Jim Wallace, CEO of Intracoastal Realty in a news release. “Deb works tirelessly and enthusiastically for both her community and for her industry, and inspires others to do the same.

She is a graduate of DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., and earned her MBA at the IBM Masters Program at Indiana University. Before joining Intracoastal Realty, she worked as a bank officer, college financial aid director and as an education director for IBM.