The Irish Lady of Pukekohe

Some of the Rudolph’s Food that Donna Boden makes and gives away, and her standing in front of one of her ‘slow-down’ signs.

Known as ‘The Irish Lady’, Donna Boden has made herself a much-loved mainstay of Pukekohe.

Boden works at Harcourts in Pukekohe and recently received a quarterly three sales award.

“The award itself is that whenever you’re working in real estate, once you achieve certain levels, you get recognised,” she says.

“So the quarterly three awards are given to people for certain sales numbers or for a length of service. I got mine for sales, but they’ll do other ones for someone who’s been there for 10, 15, 20 years.”

For Boden, it’s not about how many sales she makes or how much money she earns. For her, what’s important is doing the best job she can and treating all of her customers equally and with respect.

“I thought I wanted to do a job where I can treat everybody the same,” she says. “It doesn’t matter if they’re buying a $300,000 property or a $500,000 property, I want to treat them all the same.”

Besides real estate, she also makes what she calls ‘reindeer food’ for Santa Claus’s reindeer, but which is really given to local children at Christmas.

“I dress up as The Irish Lady, Mrs Claus at Christmas, and I go and get these little sachets of reindeer food which is basically oats and corn mixed with a bit of shiny stuff, and wrap it up with a little verse to say, ‘sprinkle on the lawn at night, so when Rudoulph flies past he’ll come down and leave presents for the kids’.”

At Christmas, she makes up the packs and donates them to the local primary schools as well as to local shops to give away. Eventually, her work at Christmas caught the attention of a group at Pukekohe Intermediate School, who decided to lend her a hand.

“What happened over the years is that I needed so many made that one of the groups at Pukekohe Intermediate, called the Heart Group, started helping me,” Boden says.

“So I would bring them all the mixture, and then they would sit in and wrap it all up into little cellophane bags and staple my cards onto them. I would go in at the end when they’ve got everything ready and bring them some drinks and snacks for doing it.

“I just love Christmas, and I think it’s lovely to give something for free in this world.”

As well as helping to celebrate Christmas, Boden has contributed to road safety by helping to sponsor several slow-down signs in the Pukekohe area. Now, because of her, all the primary schools in Pukekohe have signs asking motorists to slow down, courtesy of ‘The Irish Lady’, Donna Boden.

“I had kids at the local school and knew all the kids. The people supporting me were all local mums, dads, and granddads, so it was nice to be able to do something.”