Subway's biggest fan Kahukura Ahau (Ngati Porou) is giving the prizemoney to Kura Kai, a charity that fills school freezers with meals for rangatahi and whānau in need Photo: Supplied
LIke a the modern day "robin hood minus the robberies", a competition winner has donated their $10,000 prize money to a kai distribution charity.
When former social worker Kahukura Ahau (Ngāti Porou) saw the competition ad run by sandwich chain Subway, they already knew what they would do if they won.
"The first thought I had was, how can I redistribute this money from a big company back into the community?" Ahau said.
The competition itself was a quest to find Subway's biggest fan, giving contestants freedom to show how much they love the sandwich joint.
"From original songs to footlong tattoos, sub-themed decor, and everything in between, if you believe your love for Subway is bigger and better than most, we want to see it," Subway's director of marketing Rodica Titeica said.
"Crowning our biggest fan and serving them with $10k in prize money to eat Subway for a decade feels like the ultimate way to say a big footlong thank you."
But Ahau only wanted to know what the $10,000 would look like and received a call from the company's head office.
"I honestly thought maybe [it would be] a gold Subway card and I could just go in and buy the food, and then they were like, no, it's $10,000 cash.
"I just said, awesome. That's all I need to know."
The prize-winning video named 'Subway dreamworld' showed the 36-year-old getting a tattoo of Subway's version of the 'Cool S' or 'Super S', a popular sketch for kids who grew up in the 90's and 2000's.
But the tattoo was only a small part, Ahau said, the video was the result of a community effort.
Just 24 hours before the video was uploaded, Ahau had to find Subway themed merchandise and a tattoo artist.
"I was driving everywhere in Wellington, picking up stuff from the community from Vic Deals that had subway merch, people printed posters, 3D logos and stuff, it was so hectic. Everyone was so excited."
It also helped that the wāhine who did the majority of Ahau's facial tattoos was keen to do the jump on the kaupapa.
The money will be donated to Kura Kai, a charity that gives food to high school's and whānau in need.
The choice of charity came because Ahau, who has 13-year-old twins, knew of the financial strain "hungry teenagers" could put on a whānau.
Ahau will also join the Kura Kai mission and help feed rangatahi.
"They're our future. They're meant to be better and achieve far more than what we do, and I have that same kaupapa with my own tamariki."
The Subway 'Cool S' that is now tattooed on Kahukura Ahau Photo: Subway NZ / Facebook
To top off the win, Ahau is truly a Subway fan.
"It's my favourite takeaway... I know it sounds like a cop out, but I have it on the regular. I love Subway."
Four years ago, Ahau was told they had multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN-1), a genetic disease where tumours grow in the endocrine system such as the stomach, spleen, pancreas and the surrounding glands.
"It's terminal, but it's long term, so I'll eventually die of the disease, but we don't know how fast it could be, you know, in a month's time... we just don't know."
After having surgery to remove the spleen and pancreas, Ahau fell into a dark place.
"I realised, actually, I'm not cured, I'm still sick, and I'm always going to be sick, and it's just progressively going to get worse."
They said they lost their identity.
"I was a support worker, youth worker, social worker, and now I can't work, so it was a mourning process of all of this old life that I had built, and then becoming a beneficiary on a sickness benefit was just a lot to process."
To get out of the rut, Ahau started walking every day, connecting to the ngahere (forest) and the awa (river).
Their diet consisted of eating "Subway salads everyday", which helped them lose 65kg in one year.
The journey led to discovering their takatāpui identity.
"People who know me see my wairua, and I'm both masculine and feminine. But when it comes to gender, I see me as just a being, I'm just me, I'm just Kahukura.
"I don't identify as a male. I acknowledge my sex as wāhine, I'll always be wāhine - I have my moko kauae revealed, that's a big part of my whakapapa."
The win was for moko kanohi bearing Māori people, they said "it normalises moko".
"Here's me, terminally ill, on a sickness benefit, struggling financially, with tattoos - it would have been so easy for me to take the money.
"But what I've done is put my face out there, like surely it's broken some people's views of [stereotypes]."
But since being crowned 'Subway's biggest fan', Ahau has received a lot of backlash online and through private messaging.
One of the harsher messages read "I hope you die from Cancer", which was believed to have come from a friend of another contestant.
"I have got so much love from this, but I've got a lot of hate.
"The only opinion that matters are my babies and they're proud of me and that's all that matters."
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