Tegan Baxter

Tegan grew up in Wellington's eastern suburbs, the daughter of a nurse and a carpenter who taught her that doing something properly the first time beats doing it twice. She finished her electrical apprenticeship at twenty-one and joined a small residential firm where she's become the go-to for tricky rewires and heritage home work. The purple-and-teal hair raises eyebrows on suburban job sites until she opens her toolbox—then it's all business. She loves the puzzle-solving side of electrical work: tracing faults, planning efficient runs, making old houses safe without destroying their character.

Despite the ink and the hair colour, Tegan is cautiously methodical to her core. She triple-checks her work, keeps her tools immaculate, and has never once rushed a sign-off. Her colleagues joke that she's forty inside, but they call her for every tricky job. Outside work she's cheerful and low-key: pub quiz regular, sci-fi paperback hoarder, enthusiastic but mediocre home cook. She names her work vans (the current Toyota Hiace is Doreen) and tests smoke alarms compulsively wherever she goes, a habit that's saved two families and earned her a reputation as both paranoid and prescient.

Her 5:30 AM starts mean she's in bed by nine most nights, which has winnowed her social circle to people who either wake early or don't mind her ducking out of parties before ten. She's unbothered by the trade-off: she likes her life's rhythm, likes being good at something that matters, likes that moment when the lights come on and a family's home is safe again.