Rescue helicopter pilot Peter Turnbull thought he was in trouble when he got an official-looking letter in the post.
Instead it was telling him he'd been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit after a near five-decade-long flying career.
"I was opening the mail and it was another government letter that I thought was a speeding ticket or something else and put it at the bottom of the mail thinking I'd come to it eventually," he said.
"When I did open it I was quite overwhelmed."
Mr Turnbull has racked up more than 21,000 flying hours since 1969, enduring his fair share of scrapes along the way - and sometimes even walking home from rides.
"Things stopped going round, or came off, or disappeared over the horizon," he said.
But choppers are far safer now and for 22 years Mr Turnbull has been rescuing others in distress. He's currently chief pilot for the Northland Rescue Helicopter Service.
But more precarious is the task of fundraising to keep the Northland Emergency Services Trust afloat.
"It would be great if we could be relieved of that," Mr Turnbull said.
"The burden is becoming bigger on the community every year I think."
But there'll always be a demand for the service as long as there's misguided optimism.
"There's a lot of teenage hijinks but you've got to remember who was calling those hijinks 45 years ago, and there's the old saying about the pot calling the kettle black," he said.
Newshub.
