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Good Sort Gerry Guy - Source: ONE News -
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Tonight's good sort is a man who does not help the wider community directly but in his line of work he has been the cornerstone.
Gerry Guy's morning walk is his routine, its good exercise and a commute to his work.
"Doesn't seem like 30 years ago I walked up to the gate for the first time," he says.
In 1979, when he first rather nervously wandered in, he must have really liked the look of the place because he stuck around.
"Can't say it feels like yesterday but it certainly doesn't feel like 30 years," Guy recalls.
His work mates nominated him as a good sort because they say that Guy is the cornerstone of Mt Eden Prison.
"When you think you have seen the worst of people can do, you find out you really haven't but mainly it's given me satisfaction," Guy says of his work.
Guy's room, just like the inmates, is 10 by six. He's done nearly every job at the prison, only been injured once, trying to stop a hostage situation. He's now 70-years old and about to end his last smoko break.
When asked who he's going to miss the most at his post, Guy is undecided.
"It's a bit of both actually funnily enough. No matter what they've done, alleged to have done, at the end of the day they are still people and treat them accordingly," says Guy.
His colleagues say he was tough but loyal, grumpy sometimes but most importantly he taught them how to read prisoners.
After 30 years, one week and two days of keeping people in line, Gerry Guy, only his mum calls him Gerald, was discharged Sunday.
And it ended with handshakes and hugs.
"People often perceive corrections officers to be quite hard tough and resilient but there is also a softer side to staff, where there is a real sense of wanting to do a good job and wanting offenders to rehabilitate and reintegrate back into the community and jerry definitely had that side as well," says Grace Smit, Corrections Department.
Corrections officers don't cry, just sometimes they get a bit of dust in their eyes. Gerry Guy's last day was certainly a little dusty.
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