Dr Timoti's turnaround GANG MEMBER TO MEDICINE MAN

In his fifties and after time in prison, he decided to turn his pain into positivity

- Kasia De Vydt-Jillings

Dr Timoti Te Moke has experienced childhood abuse, addictions, gang life and repeated prison stints. But, he says, it's the same single-minded focus that helped him survive those environments that drove him to become a doctor in his fifties.

“When you decide to be part of a gang, you decide there and then that it's going to be your life, no matter what anyone says or any barriers that are put in front of you,” he explains.

“So when I first got knocked back from the University of Auckland, a lot of people would have been dismayed, but not me because I've got this single focus. It didn't matter what happened – I was going to become a doctor.”

It's a remarkable story of success in the face of many seemingly insurmountable hurdles.

“I had to go through this evolution,” he shares. “By the time I got into medicine, I had amassed some unbelievable skills, the beliefs that I had intelligence and potential – and also that I had the ability to realise that potential.

“But I'm the outlier. I'm the exception, for now, at least, though it's my hope that things change.”

For the first six years of his life, Timoti, 56, remembers being surrounded by unconditional love from his grandparents, who were raising him in the small Bay of Plenty settlement of Matatā.

But when he was taken from their care to live with his mother and stepfather, his world turned suddenly and unexpectedly violent.