When Auckland towtruck business owner Evan Watson died 11 years ago, for wife Pam things could hardly have been worse.

In two harrowing years she’d seen him slowly, inexorably lose his battle with cancer.

Now she was facing, alone, the fight of her life – forced to push aside her grief and focus everything on saving their business.

It demanded the 47-year-old step up from her past role looking after the admin side of Southern Districts Towing, to fully take over running the whole show.

The challenges of being a woman boss in the male-dominated towing industry scarcely rated – not compared to what else she was confronted with.

The rent on SDT’s sprawling Manukau City base was an eyewatering figure per year…and while Evan had been terminally ill, the towing industry, the country – in fact, the whole world – had plunged into a recession, thanks to the Global Financial Crisis.

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