On the eve of her retirement, she talks to Tracey Roxburgh about her time in the thin blue line.
Sergeant Kate Pirovano, of Queenstown, likes "poignant dates".
Which is why she selected her graduation date to retire.
Today, Sgt Pirovano will officially step down from the New Zealand Police, wanting to finish up while she still enjoyed the job.
Originally from the North Island, Sgt Pirovano, who declined to give her age, had wanted a job "where you feel like you’re making a difference", so chose policing.
However, an ambition to join the police was delayed initially due to poor eyesight.
The community relations co-ordinator for the police, handling recruitment at the time, asked if she might be interested in helping start up Victim Support while she waited for corrective surgery.
Initially volunteering in 1993, she went on to become the co-ordinator of the group for three years while it was being established.
With her eyesight fixed, Sgt Pirovano went through police college — at the time there were 60 recruits in her wing, 12 of whom were women. All of them took the top prizes that year.
Her first posting was in Palmerston North, where she said she had a "baptism by fire".
"My first shift in the police was New Year’s Eve, Bunnythorpe Hotel, getting my bum pinched and one of my colleagues marching this guy outside."
Sgt Pirovano said there were already a couple of other women in the police force there and they had a "really good, supportive crew and supervisors".
"I did find, though, in the early stages I felt like I had to work twice as hard to be seen as good ... just to try to prove myself."
In January 1997, she also had to deal with a "tree sit-in" in Fitzherbert Ave, where protesters tied themselves to trees to prevent council felling operations to make room for four-laning of the avenue.
About three years later, she started one of New Zealand’s first community patrol groups in Palmerston North — which became "quite well-established" — before moving to the community policing centre in Highbury, a western suburb in Palmerston North.
It was a place with "great community spirit, but just a lot of social dysfunction".
"It was a very poor socioeconomic population there, decile one schools — the [police centre] was a converted house and across the road was the Black Power gang pad and around the corner was the Mongrel Mob gang pad.
"There were amazing agencies, like Te Waka Huia, that worked closely with the whanau and the community there to try to curb the [family harm] offending that was happening there."
While based there Sgt Pirovano policed Apec in 1999, in Auckland, and then went back and did three rotations during the 2000 America’s Cup.
She decided to stay on in Auckland as part of "Operation Band-aid", driven by a lack of staffing in inquiry teams and aiming to clear the backlogs.
That was a "big change" working on "reasonably serious crime" — but there were a few light-hearted moments as well.
Sgt Pirovano recalled vehicles having been stolen from the back of a car carrier.
One was recovered at a residential property, so a warrant was obtained and police attended, intending to arrest the alleged offender, only to find him hiding behind his bedroom door with a serious case of chicken pox.
"No-one wanted to touch him," she laughed.
After two years in Auckland, Sgt Pirovano decided to move south. Her philosophy was simple.
"I thought I’d spent the first 40 [years] in the north, I’d spend the next 40 in the south."
While she had wanted to be posted to Alexandra, there were no vacancies there.
There was, however, an opening in Queenstown.
That was in 2004, and by the following year she had been promoted to sergeant, along with Kate Saxton — they were the first female sergeants in the resort’s police force.
In the intervening period, Sgt Pirovano had done stints in liquor licensing, at Queenstown Airport, on the frontline and, for the past 18 months, in road policing.
It was the latest she had enjoyed most, she said.
"It’s the prevention role — you’ve got the opportunity to make your community safer.
"You’re on the front foot, whereas when you’re doing ... front line, you’re basically the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
"You’re attending all the emergencies and all the violence and where things have gone really bad for people.
"It’s nice to be in a role where you might be able to get ahead of that."
Looking back on her time in the blue uniform, Sgt Pirovano said she was most proud of the times she was able to support and help people when they needed it the most.
One example was helping a woman leave an abusive relationship involving "a very dangerous offender".
"It was that cycle of violence and the woman just couldn’t see a way out.
"Yet, she came with some support and we sat down and nutted out a plan, which resulted in his arrest and imprisonment.
"She was so brave in court and gave evidence — I think he thought she would crumble, and she didn’t.
"That was a testament to her courageousness at the time.
"It’s a hard thing for anyone to do, let alone someone who’d come from where she’d come from and what she’d been through.
"You’d like to think you helped support them through one of the darkest times of their lives and they’ve come out the other side OK."
While she was now looking forwards to actually enjoying the lifestyle in Queenstown Lakes she had moved there for, and planned to do some volunteer work in the future, she said she would miss aspects of policing — and not others.
"I’ll miss the people and I’ll miss some of the work, definitely the work I’m doing now ... I won’t miss the drunken bad behaviour.
"I think everybody in this job deserves recognition every day — it’s a lot of times quite a thankless job.
"You kind of feel helpless in this job in some ways; you know there’s a lot of work to be done, you just don’t know where to start."
