KEY POINTS:
As a volunteer fire-fighter, Rita Marks had been to many car crashes, including some involving drink-drivers.
What she didn't know about the call-out late one night last August was that the victims were her 15-year-old daughter and two of her nieces.
When she arrived at the crash scene
just up the road from her house in Matata, Ms Marks found her daughter, Stevie-Rae, lying on the ground by the bumper of a car.
Stevie-Rae was dead, and her cousins, Velvet Marks and Darcy Stoneham, were badly injured.
"It's the worst thing that could happen to any mum, being a firefighter and picking up your own child off the road," Ms Marks told the Weekend Herald.
The three teenage girls were mown down while walking along the well-lit street by another young woman, Karma McIvor, who was driving drunk.
McIvor, then 22, was twice the legal limit and on the wrong side of the road when she hit the girls.
She had been warned by a friend not to drive because of her intoxicated state.
Although her car bumper was torn off and her was windscreen smash by the impact, McIvor fled the scene.
This week, she was senetenced to two years and four months in prison.
Her actions have left a trail of wrecked lives, not least the life of Ms Marks, 38. "Nobody knows what I'm going through," she said.
"To me, [McIvor] didn't get a sentence. It's me and my family who have been sentenced."
Wednesday's sentencing was the first time Ms Marks had seen McIvor - she found it too difficult to go to her earlier court appearances.
But she was robbed of a chance to tell the now 23-year-old how she felt when a miscommunication between court staff meant she did not get the opportunity to read her victim impact statement.
Instead, the mother of seven listened, head in hands, as McIvor read a tearful letter of apology to her and the other victims.
McIvor repeatedly said how sorry she was, and although Ms Marks acknowledged the apology as genuine, said she could not forgive McIvor.
"All she needed to do was stop [after the collision]. That's what it all boils down to."
McIvor told police she fled because she "freaked out", and she called 111 once she got home. She is also a broken figure, serving, as the judge said, "her own self-imposed life sentence".
She has chronic anxiety and a fear of going outside, and like Ms Marks, is on medication and receiving counselling.
On Wednesday, she cowered in the corner of the courtroom, keeping her head down as she has done at every appearance since her arrest on August 29.
Her trauma is obvious in her skeletal frame and pale face, just as Ms Marks' pain is evident as she talks about her daughter.
"She was a really lovely girl," she sobs. "She was always bubbly. Out of all my children, she was the only one who always used to kiss me every day before she went to school."
Stevie-Rae, the third child, loved sea creatures and had told her mother she wanted to be a marine biologist.
Ms Marks is determined to erect a headstone for her daughter at Rangitihi Marae in Matata.
But she says she is "up to my eyeballs" in debt - like McIvor's mother, who reportedly borrowed money to fly from her home in Australia to support her daughter at each of her court appearances.
Both sides - McIvor's family, and the surviving victims and their families - filled the Tauranga District Court on Wednesday, their numbers and their tears testament to the pain drink-driving causes.
Ms Marks continues her volunteer firefighting in tribute to her daughter, who used to tell her she was doing a good job. She is also considering helping police with public talks about the dangers of driving drunk.
