The lady with the muffins: Unsung police champion retires after 48 years

Leigh Bilton at the Hastings Police Station, her final stop in 48 years as a non-sworn staff member of the New Zealand Police. Photo / Paul Taylor

Leigh Bilton never foresaw spending almost half a century in a police station.

But that’s the way it’s been in one of the longest careers in the New Zealand Police, 48 years as non-sworn staff. She’s been the lady at the counter, or to staff, sometimes, the lady with the muffins.

Based mainly in the Hastings station – both old and the new station and Eastern Police District headquarters which opened three years ago – she retires this week, with a smile that reflects more on the enjoyment of the job than on the chance to do something else and put her feet up.

Asked what has meant most in her career, it’s “the people”, meaning the thousands of staff she’s worked with, and (most) of the members of the public. She’s dealt with everyone from people handing in found watches and wallets, to people who have come in to confess to crimes as serious as murder.

“You treat people how you’d want to be treated,” she says.

Detective Sergeant Darren Pritchard, who’s served 33 years and set to deliver the tribute at the farewell, says she’s been a key part of relationships, which he believes is the foundation of the police job.

And if you can get someone to come and confess at the counter you’ve done your job well, he says.

The downside is the tragedies, with some hitting home, particularly the fatal shooting of Constable Glenn McKibbin, of Hastings, in a Flaxmere street on April 21, 1996, and Senior Constable Len Snee, of Napier, on May 7, 2009.

Bilton’s a “Paraparaumu girl” who had done several “random” jobs before noticing a newspaper advertisement for a civilian job with the police in Wellington Central in 1974. At that time there was still a Gestetner ink copier around, things were moving into photocopiers, and emailing in New Zealand was barely a byte or a pixel in the global picture of the technology age.

She came to Hawke’s Bay in 1986 and Pritchard marvels at the way Bilton must have juggled clerical and telephonist duties, including answering the emergency call, despatching cars and the “watchhouse” duties.

“It was a bit like the Dukes of Hazzard at times,” she says.

Despite her own enduring legacy with the muffins – which seem to have vanished due to some political correctness around the workplace – she still reckons she got the best of the deal.

“I never had any thought of lasting this long. But I’ve had no reason to leave. It’s 48 years, I’ve no regrets. I’ve been really spoilt.”