We are incredibly grateful to Tomas Colby (class of 2025) for sharing this exciting life update, and for his inspiring community service. 

"Since leaving Wakatipu High School, I was lucky enough to be accepted into the Hato Hone St John EMT cadet programme. It has been a pretty full-on six months, including a residential training course in Palmerston North, practical and clinical training, ambulance shifts and final assessments.

I’ve recently completed the programme and graduated with my EMT diploma, which I’m really proud of. The residential part in particular was challenging, but I learnt a huge amount and met some great people along the way.

Emergency services have been a big part of my life for a while. I joined the Queenstown Volunteer Fire Brigade while I was still at WHS and was really grateful that the school supported me with that, including allowing me to respond with the brigade when appropriate during school hours.

Since moving to Dunedin for St John, I’ve also continued volunteering with Fire and Emergency at Port Chalmers.
I’m now looking forward to getting properly into life as an EMT and continuing with both ambulance and fire service work.

I really appreciate the support I had from the school while I was there — particularly when I was starting out in emergency services and trying to work out what I wanted to do."

-Tomas Colby, August 24 2026