For Peter, the local hero title is a step away from his usual modest style.
"I tend to be a back room, get on with it type of person, so it feels a bit scary being public," said Peter, who has been heavily involved in the Salvation Army since childhood.
"There are a lot of people involved in getting to this place, not just me.
"But it's nice."
From 12, Peter played in the Salvation Army Band, helping to shape his passion for people and the community.
As well as playing at Levin Hospital, Kimberly Centre, and Hokio and Kohitere Boys Centres, he performed at church services, Anzac Day parades and Christmas events throughout Wellington.
From there, he started working as a counsellor and programme director for the Salvation Army Bridge programmes, before voluntarily creating Emotionally Free in 1991, a weekly group for addicts and co-dependents.
Six years later, he was asked to organise and facilitate an eight week in-house programme for inmates in Arohata Prison.
It was the first fulltime alcohol and drug programme run at Arohata and, as far as Peter knows, in any New Zealand prison.
His work, he said, has always focused on addressing the wider problems for a person with addiction or compulsive behaviours.
"Recovery isn't just abstinence or modification - it involves learning to live life constructively, without addictions.
"I look at why these people are using these behaviours because we don't want them to just become free from one addiction and then simply transfer it to something else.
"That's not freedom."
In his biggest career leap, Peter founded Cross Roads Christian Community Trust and Cross Roads Counselling, where he still works as director.
As a result, more than 1000 individuals have received counselling.
In 1997, after attending Think Tank in the US, Peter established the International Substance Abuse and Addiction Coalition, which continues to network and train Christians from more than 40 countries who work with substance abusers.
Two years later, he founded the now-thriving Te Nikau Training Centre.
"At Te Nikau we believe that addictive behaviours have their roots primarily in life issues and addictions are used as a life coping mechanism.
"Therefore life issues need to be dealt with and new, constructive living skills learned.
"Those who finish the programme successfully, in terms of maintaining stopping using their addictions, are around 80 per cent."
While Peter is mainly known in Kapiti for his local work, there is a colourful backlog to his story.
Along with mostly-self funded visits to areas including Australia, the UK, US, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Singapore to volunteer at alcohol and drug centres, Peter worked at the Salvation Army Addiction Programme on Rotoroa Island, in the Hauraki Gulf.
Having gone to Scott Base in Antarctica as part of the Salvation Army, he brought musicians together from New Zealand, Scott Base and the US McMurdo Station to play Christmas carols.
On top of staffing an emergency caravan in Miramar, Wellington, he ran basketball at Rimutaka Prison, founded New Zealand's first toy library, wrote for Salvation Army publications and conducted church elder and small group leadership.
For 12 years, he worked for the New Zealand Post Office as a coast station marine radio operator in Wellington, Scott Base and the Chatham Islands, which he said "was also a way of helping people".
There, he handled communications, distress watch and search and rescue activities.
During his stint at the Chatham Islands he trained with the volunteer fire brigade and worked off-duty hours on the supply ship when it was in, before sparing his time as a volunteer civil defence emergency communications officer at the Beehive in Wellington.
According to those around him, including Te Nikau Training Centre staff member Malinda Shepherd-Harris, Peter's contribution to the communities and wellbeing of New Zealand has been profound.
"Te Nikau Training Centre is a rare gem," Malinda said.
"Many individuals and families would attest to the life changing impact Peter and Te Nikau Training Centre have had on their lives."
