Ngaruawahia gang leader Jamie Pink sentenced in Hamilton today.
From the age of 5, Jamie Pink moved around many foster homes, shuffled between schools.
Unfortunately his story is nothing unusual when growing up in New Zealand.
Pink, the leader of Ngaruawahia gang Tribal Huks, was living in Auckland at that stage and attended about 20 different primary schools before the age of 11.
By then he was back in Hamilton where he went to a couple of high schools - Melville and Fraser High School.
"My old lady was going with some pretty heavy people in the gang world," he told the Herald. "Most of those gangs were pretty good to us as kids so we got to see the other side of gang life. They might be going out whacking people, but that's how it was. It was pretty f****d up in the 70s and 80s.
"I got a bit lucky at 11, and got to stay with my grandparents and got to get fed properly and learned to read and write. It wasn't [my] old lady's fault. She was very young. The gang world was a lot different, a lot more violent then."
But then his grandfather died and Pink gave up on school altogether.
Pink appeared for sentencing in the Hamilton District Court for possessing a studded baseball bat and unlawful possession of two firearms after two incidents in October and November last year.
The first incident involved him arriving at the Waikato Times office in Hamilton with his bullet-riddled four-wheel-drive. He asked staff to ring the police as it had loaded weapons inside.
It was heard in court today that that moment on October 24 was the culmination of a week-long effort to rid his beloved Ngaruawahia of methamphetamine [P]. He realised after being shot at that it was getting out of control and he needed to make a public declaration that the war had to finally stop.
The second charge involved police finding a studded baseball bat in the back of his car about 10 days later, a weapon he says was not his.
Judge Simon Menzies sentenced Pink to four months' community detention and 12 months' intensive supervision. He also ordered the destruction of the weapons.
Jamie Pink, president of the Ngaruawahia gang Tribal Huk, in the dock at the Hamilton District Court. Photo / Alan Gibson
The fiery shoot-out that left his vehicle riddled with bullets also resulted in him losing an eye - he now wears a glass replacement.
"Obviously things can get a little bit out of control and sometimes I do some silly things. I will pay for that [today] and if I get a bit of time then that's fair."
As for the P problem, he says his town is now 90 per cent free of the drug.
He's keen to see it gone completely but he says he can't do much if a random car stops in the street and hocks it off. Plus, he wants to be more subtle with how he deals with the sellers and dealers.
When Pink reached 14, he'd had enough of "having fun" or getting into trouble at high school.
His father then got him into his first job, which would eventually create an unenviable work ethic.
"I went to the freezing works at 14. You tell them you're 17, and as long as you were tall enough you could get on the chain, so that was us. Spent a few years there."
It was at the freezing works at Horotiu and while sporadically living in Ngaruawahia that he came across the Tribal Huk gang.
"Most of them in Ngaruawahia and Hamilton went up there. That freezing works was the biggest hiring place back then. 1700 workers. I was like 'woah'. Going from high school to the meat market. I learned how to sharpen a knife.
"The freezing works was full of Huks and I started drinking at the Delta Tavern in, like, 1986. Woah, it was pretty rough then. Was cool fun."
He said he grew up "wanting to be a gangster" from a young age and knew early on that the Huks would be for him.
"They were our heroes growing up. I looked up to them big time."
Pink now has a family of his own - with kid number five on the way.
However, given his own rough upbringing he's keen to make sure that as many kids as possible have a decent feed once a day.
Jamie Pink sporting his new glass eye (left) outside the Hamilton District Court in March. Photo / Belinda Feek
"A lot of us came from being pretty hungry. I was a hungry little guy, and it does play on you a bit. We were a bit hungry and sick and you grow up. It was alright, but it doesn't do you any good, because you went those times without food and you end up being a crook to get food.
"I just feel that there's a big problem in New Zealand now. Even with John Key. I'm glad he got his medal, but there's 300,000 hungry kids left on his watch, you know. We're feeding 1000 of them but it ain't getting better out there."
Pink and his Huk crew set up what was dubbed the "sandwich gang" seven years ago, originally just making sandwiches for school kids around Ngaruawahia.
It was modest back then with just 10 schools. Now he's maxed out with 60 schools and feeding 1000 kids - but says he can keep it up "for years".
"Things can be done when you've got a [gang] membership and you get people to put in, and use your own resources. Thank you to everybody that helped in any way: finance and adding food to the food run.
"I get a couple of calls every week from different schools wanting us to put them on our programme but I can't."
He says the Huks are all about self-sufficiency. Beef and sheep farms and a piggery help fund the scheme. He's also branched out into food trucks and has a couple of accommodation businesses operating. He also has Hamilton strip joint, Route 66, which he says will also start doing food soon.
"I've gone into portable food. We do these massive burgers and they sell for like $5: every time they have the Waikato rugby team play, we get among the Fieldays ... so we're getting into the food industry in a big way."
He's also roped his oldest child Stella, 23, to work on the food trucks. Son, Deus, 22, is in security, and 13-year-old Kahui wants to be a carpenter.
His namesake, Allan James Pink Jnr, is 15 months old, and his "Sergeant at Arms" - another boy - is about to arrive.
Despite his work to help hungry children, he says he's no role model - he has 78 previous convictions, many for violence and weapon possession - and is still a gangster.
"I'm not a role model though, I've got to be careful. We just do what we do, and I got to be careful what I say because you know, we're not good people, really.
"We come from having a bit of a rough upbringing so I guess I'm a bit of a rough diamond but at the end of the day we're still gangsters."
