Please help to get Pepes family back to Samoa for her memorial

“From a distance I thought it was a rubbish bag. She was wearing all black, but when I got closer, it was a person”

“about seven or eight cars also drove past the woman but no one stopped to help”

Auckland voted the worst city to live in when a person can be hit by a car and people drive around them.

To most of us these were just badly written news articles but to my friend this was the worst day of her life – her mum, a pillar or strength and support to her family and community, always going out of her way to make sure the overwhelmed, underappreciated and misunderstood of West Auckland had a caring ear and a hand to hold through their journey had been hit by a car and nobody stopped to help her. Her family weren’t even informed until the next day.

In July this year 22 people died on New Zealand roads, 3 of these people were pedestrians – one of them was Pepe, on her way to do what she did every day, support her friend.

This amazing woman, who was always surrounded by the people she helped and loved was killed in a hit and run and left to die on the street alone. Maybe if someone had stopped she would still be with us today.

Her family, who also give everything to the community are all-round good people choosing jobs like ministers, lecturers and at the moment hard working, kind hearted students. They have been left without the matriarch of their family and a huge debt which they took on to fulfil Pepe’s last wish; taking her home to Samoa to be buried with her parents.

They are now faced with another huge cost, her memorial plaque which will be presented with her unveiling in Samoa. They feel like no-one would help them, like they don’t deserve our support but if any family does, it is this family.

Please help me show them that we do care and that they do deserve our support; that not all New Zealanders have the “some-one else will deal with it” mentality.

Nothing will bring this amazing woman back, but we can help her family through a hard time by showing our support and if not with a few dollars please do something good for someone else today, its what Pepe would have wanted.

Thank you

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12091598