Whatever It Takes Trust in Napier welcomes new CEO, former police area commander Sam Aberahama

Former Hastings CIB boss and police Gisborne Tairāwhiti area commander Sam Aberahama has ended a 36-year police career and returned to Hawke’s Bay to try another slant with social issues as CEO of mental health and addiction href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/health-community-services/" target="_blank">services provider Whatever It Takes Trust.

Former Senior police officer Sam Aberahama during Monday's Pukemokimoki Marae pōwhiri ahead of starting as CEO at Whatever It Takes Trust in Napier the next day. Photo / Doug Laing

“In the chair tomorrow,” he said, after a pōwhiri at Pukemokimoki Marae in Napier, attended by over 200 people, including staff, stakeholders, mum Oki and other family, members of their Rarotongan community, and more than a dozen police colleagues.

It showed a keenness to get straight to work on the mission he picked-up on when he searched Google for the trust last year after seeing the job advertised while pondering what he’d do for the future, having made the decision to retire from the police last September.

He concedes that despite the trust now having been around for about 20 years, he hadn’t heard of it, but he “liked what I saw”, the philosophy of supporting clients “journey to wellbeing”, and he knew Phil Ross, the man retiring from the position, previously known as general manager.

A big part of it, he concedes, was for he and wife Kathy to return to Hawke’s Bay.

Aberahama will have to mix the experiences of life, the policing, management and business acumen, but says he does not have the golden answer and still has to learn the WIT operation and what can and can’t be done within the framework in which it operates.

WIT has grown to about 80 staff, manages about 80 residential units, and facilities such as the Lighthouse centres familiar to the street-dwellers of Napier and Hastings, and runs a variety of contracts with Government departments.

He has the background, having in a police profile published at the time of his retirement from the job four months ago spoken of how as a child in Hastings he had seen the police at home more often than anyone should see them, as they took his father away after another violent outburst.

Police officers and the Rarotongan community help celebrate former police inspector Sam Aberahama's pōwhiri ahead of a new job as CEO of Whatever It Takes Trust in Napier. Photo / Doug Laing

Growing up in Camberley, Hastings, he made his way to Hastings Boys’ High School, as attested by Napier Pilot City Trust secretary Mark Cleary after the pōwhiri, recalling the days when Cleary was the teacher in charge of class of 5CY.

Aberahama left to join the Air Force, but after two years decided “the police was where I wanted to be” and would serve 10 years in Auckland before returning to Hawke’s Bay as Detective Senior Sergeant in charge of Hastings CIB in 1998. He was promoted to Inspector and became the area commander in Gisborne in 2008.

In 2021, he was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in the New Zealand Honours.

He said he faces with eyes and ears wide open the issues of homelessness, which have been a part of the recent WIT profile through its attempts to place clients in suitable environments of supported living.

“I’d be keen to explore what we’re doing, and what’s working,” he said. “A number of people have come up to me today [at the pōwhiri] who are wanting to talk.”

They would talk about whether providers, agencies and other stakeholders are “individually and collectively getting bang for buck”.

Although the police career involved many encounters with the mentally unwell and homeless, he concedes: “This is all new.”

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 41 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.