A Rotorua marae team has battled through tough personal challenges to give up cigarettes.
A group of 10 from Owhata Marae has won $6000 in the recent regional Wero Challenge - a three-month team stop smoking contest. Every member was smoke-free in the final team smoke analysis test, including Rangipaeroa King-Mosen who had gone through every parent's worst nightmare.
Her son, 24-year-old, Huri King-Mosen was killed in Wainuiomata last year. Mrs King-Mosen said it hadn't been easy trying to quit with the stress of travelling to Wellington for the ongoing court appearances of her son's accused killer. A trial has been scheduled for November.
Through the challenge and with the support of family and friends, she had cut back from more than 30 cigarettes a day.
"At our son's tangi [funeral] I felt really settled because it was such a beautiful send off but going back down there refreshes all that negativity. We come back here and start to feel really good and settled and boom, we go down and it starts up again."