Pea Ridge native Tracie Clifton Lilley works as a Certified Dental Assistant for the Riverside Family Dental practice, where she has brightened patients visits with a smile, while improving them, with all the skills and dexterity befitting her vocation.

The daughter of Norman and Wanda Clifton, Lilley says that she knew pretty early on that she wanted to join the world of Dentistry. Despite her modern day poise and confidence, Lilley once shared the all too common childhood fear of the dentist’s office.

“When I was young, I was scared to death of going to the dentist. I used to cry and scream whenever I had to get cavities or anything done. So I decided that I would become a dental assistant to help kids or anyone that’s really afraid to go into the dentist office,” she recounts. “I always imagined that I could be nice to them and make them comfortable. I was always scared to death and I always wanted my mom or someone else to come with me, but that wasn’t possible. So that’s exactly why I decided to become one.”

With that conviction in mind, Lilley wasted little time in making that dream a reality.

After graduating from Cabin Swamp Christian Academy in 1996, Lilley went onto attend Wayne Community College in Goldsboro, where she enrolled in their dental assisting program.

“The path could be tough at times, I mean, Wayne is a solid school. The hours were a lot…. we would go to school at eight in the morning and we wouldn’t finish until six or seven at night,” she says. “It was a year long program, so it was a lot to fit into at the time.”

After putting in her year and graduating from Wayne in 1997, Lilley took her board certification test and became a certified dental assistant. Now fully certified, Lilley would relocate to Chowan County and begin working for Dr. Hines’ practice in Edenton for a year.

“Hines actually had offices in Edenton and in Columbia, but I didn’t end up working for him for very long,” Lilley explains. “Really, I only worked in his office for about a year before I met Dr. Thompson.”

Meeting Dr. Terry Thompson would end up becoming Lilley’s longest and most significant stint in the business. In fact, it is likely where most folks in Plymouth got to know her best.

“I met Dr. Thompson in 1999 and started working with him and I’ve been right here in our little building on Brinkley ever since,” she recounts fondly.

Lilley says that her journey to working alongside Thompson began while dividing her time with Hines’ office.

“A lady from Columbia came in and said that Dr. Thompson’s assistant had either left or retired and that he was trying to see if anyone was interested in helping him. I was only working for Dr. Hines’s part time at the time and I was looking for something more permanent… Dr. Hines was older and we all knew that he was getting ready to retire,” she recalls.

As fortune would have it, the dental world is small and word travels fast, and before Lilley knew it, Thompson reached out to her first...