"He just felt for them. It was just showing a bit of care," she said. "They are away from their homes for 12 months at a time. They never saw their families."
Haar-Warner said she and her husband had a young family at the time they started volunteering and remembered the bond the seafarers would form with her children.
"They would always show photos of their family back home. You know they were thinking of their families at home," she said.
"When you have a heart for lonely people, there is something in every one of us who care about people to a big degree."
The United Seafarers' Mission centre at the Port of Tauranga now has new reclad walls, new carpet and a coat of fresh paint.
Chairman Jeff Law said the upgrade had been planned for about three years.
"It was a tatty old building," he said. "Now it looks very fresh and new."
But Law said the upgrade could not have been possible without the help of the many volunteers at the Tauranga mission centre.
"We have had a lot of help from the community," he said.
Law said about 70 volunteers offer free mini-buses, Wi-Fi and "good, friendly Kiwi hospitality to the seafarers who visit Tauranga".
"Some of them haven't been home for probably a year at a time," he said. "It is a pretty hard life."
Law said the Port of Tauranga was the busiest and biggest port in the country and about 16,000 seafarers visit the centre each year.
"That's about 50 or 60 each day," he said. "We get about 100 different nationalities come through here."
