After 40 years on the job — all based in Timaru — Snr Const Gibbs said she was looking forward to wearing sandals.
She also planned to play a lot of golf.
She was born and raised in Christchurch, and while other girls spoke of becoming air hostesses or nurses, she was telling people from a young age she wanted to be a police officer.
Thankfully — when she was old enough to join — she met the height criteria.
Snr Const Gibbs was recruited in Timaru, and said when she first arrived she could remember live exports had come in and there were protests down at the port.
She felt a little surprised as they sat in a van monitoring the protest to ensure it would not get worse, as she had not thought policing would involve sitting watching protests.
She said in comparison to some of the protests nowadays, those protests had been "pretty tame".
In the same year were the Pleasant Point floods, and then the Boxing Day double homicide in Centennial Park.
She had been a scene guard at night for the double homicide.
Being alone in the park was nerve-racking enough, but with murderers on the loose and the fear of other cops pulling a prank on her, "I was petrified".
She said the area had had its fair share of homicides.
"They stick in your mind more."
At police college, there were just two or three women in her 100-plus person wing, and when she began working in Timaru, she would often get called back after hours if a female offender needed to be searched.
However, nowadays, "there’s more girls than you can poke a stick at".
In more recent years, the Covid pandemic had impacted the job.
She had played her part by travelling up to Hamilton to hold the border.
"We were talking about Covid the other day, how cool it was to drive around and seeing families out walking around together, with the teddy bears in the windows."
Life had slowed down a little, even for the police.
"Now we are back into it."
The main thing she had noticed after the pandemic was a lot of anxiety and truancy which were not due to usual reasons.
She said children were "struggling to get back into normal patterns."
Social media had also affected everyone’s behaviours.
"It consumes their life."
"I loved the old days, with no social media."
And nowadays there were meth issues, which were causing more family harm.
For the last 12 years, Snr Const Gibbs has been working in youth aid.
"Even in that 12 years, kids have become so much more complex and damaged."
"The first 1000 days of a baby’s life are bloody important."
The worst part of her job had been dealing with family deaths. Some nights she had to walk up more than one driveway, with some family members having already learned the bad news from social media.
She said there were some bad days, but if she thought it was too awful she would have just walked away.
"On the whole, most people are really good to deal with.
"Working with the police has been the best job ever, there is so much variety."
And there were "awesome workmates".
She said when she was working nights in town people at the bar would tell her she had taught them to cross the road.
To which she was quick to take credit.
"I said ‘I must have done a good job, because you’re still here with us’."
Her husband John had grown up in the area, so it had been hard making their way down the main street together as he stopped to chat with everyone he passed. The couple have one son, now 24 years old.
She said South Canterbury was a great place to live, with the sea, rivers and lakes within easy access, and it was a great community — "and it’s safe".
She had applied — unsuccessfully — for just one job outside of Timaru in her 40 years in the police, but otherwise had been content to stay put.
"I always said I’d leave when I was 60."
She planned to play a lot more golf, and had secured a part-time job at Driving Miss Daisy.
She said she would not miss wearing her heavy vest and boots in summer.
