We would like to pay tribute to the dedicated pro bono work performed for our clients by our attorneys, advocates and mediators. If you would like to be featured in our newsletters, please send us your contribution. This month we are pleased to profile one of our conveyancers, Chrysi Kripotos
I was born in Springs to immigrant Greek parents. My father had left Greece in 1931 with the Great Depression and landed by ship in Mozambique where he spent a couple of years doing manual work and selling fish which he caught.
In 1933 he walked from Mozambique to South Africa and made his way to the first big mining town at the time, which was Springs. In the late 1940s he started corresponding by mail to my mother who was working as a bank teller in Greece as a “pen-pal”. He then sent her an air ticket to come to South Africa to visit in 1950, whereafter they formally met, fell in love and married.
I was the last born of three children. We stayed in Springs and my parents had a café (as many Greeks did in those days) on the corner opposite the maternity home where I was born. I then attended school from Grade 1 to Matric at the Convent of Our Lady Of Mercy which was round the corner from both our home and the café. I attended Wits University and obtained my BA (Law) and LLB degrees, finally graduating in 1981. I served my two years of articles with a firm in Benoni called Cook Cook & Falconer commencing in 1982, where I later became a partner and ran their Brakpan branch. I did everything from litigation, commercial, criminal and conveyancing work during this period from 1982 to 1994. While I was with Cook Cook & Falconer I was admitted as an Attorney in February 1985, thereafter as a conveyancer in 1993. In 1994 I left Cook Cook & Falconer to become an Associate with Cliffe Dekker & Todd Inc in Johannesburg where I only dealt with conveyancing matters. I was admitted as a Notary Public in 1996. I stayed with Cliffe Dekker until 1999 when I left to join up with a couple of fellow associates and started my conveyancing practice on my own in association with them. I have been running my conveyancing firm since about 2000.
I have been hoping to retire but that seems a very far off dream. Most of my immediate family live in Greece and the rest are spread across the world from Canada, USA and Australia. I only have one sister here in South Africa but no other relatives living here. I am pleased to say that I am the only “Kripotos” living in the whole of the Southern Hemisphere as far as I am aware.
I never married as I have always loved being single and my own boss. I currently live in Boksburg and now work full time from my home. As I am constantly “about to retire”, I do not have any staff assisting me and only deal with transfer matters and certain notarial transactions such as ANCs. I love going to the Deeds office, meeting with clients, drawing up all the relevant transactions, and generally doing everything personally, from the time the instruction is received until it is finally registered.
I have two dogs that I cherish dearly and who keep me sane, make sure I stop working at my computer every couple of hours to play with them, and to take them for long walks in the park. My hobbies are reading, painting, mosaic and pewter work. At times I think family and friends look at what I have done to a wall and think to themselves, ”What was she thinking!” but I have great fun thinking up different ways to jazz up my furniture or some blank space in my home. My current obsession is painting and stencilling some of my furniture. Workwise I absolutely love doing the pro bono work although it sometimes has to take a back seat when normal work accumulates.
