Military man turned personal trainer
with the kids, dug wells.”
Anya’s illness, initially considered terminal, preceded his overseas postings.
Mitch’s praise for his former partner, Shelly Mitchell’s, care for their daughter brings more tears. “She was there 24/7. I wasn’t.” He and Shelly met while he was at Boys’ High and she was working in McDonald’s.
“I kind of fancied her, when she was at university in Palmerston North we met up by chance. We were together 13 years, didn’t marry, the fact she’s a Mitchell too’s purely coincidental”.
Part one of Mitch’s army life ended after 10 years. Before his second stint he studied personal training and business skills in Auckland.
“When I graduated, there was none of those sorts of jobs in Rotorua. A mate asked me to do private security overseas.”
His first assignment was a 52-day anti-piracy gig on a cablelaying ship.
“Somalian pirates are like wasps buzzing around your vessel, there’ve been pirates for centuries. There they have the same status as All Blacks do here.”
Levering out of him that he was armed, the inevitable question follows, “did you kill anyone?”
“Put it this way, to them we’re the villains, to us they’re the invaders. In Yemen we bought our weapons on the black market — that was a mud hut. I was in a situation where I asked a mate to pass over an AK47, levelled it, it didn’t fire, I guess we both got lucky.”
Back in Rotorua, he used a garage sale’s proceeds to fund a free boot camp trial.
“With five minutes to the advertised opening time no one showed then suddenly all these vehicles turned up. My fitness programmes grew from there. I worked out of my garage, business grew so fast I leased a gym, then my present one.
“The military gave me some great skills, I do military-style workouts, boot camps became battle camps — battling to get out of your comfort zone, punch force fit.”