In the 22 years she's lived in New Zealand, Margo Atkinson can't recall ever being abused for being South American.
Quite the opposite. Moving here from Bolivia at the turn of the millennium, she was immediately struck by the friendliness of the Kiwis she came across.
"I couldn't believe it and couldn't get my head around it," she remembers.
"Who are these people, how helpful they are? Many times people would stop in the street and help give directions, or they would try to talk with me about where I come from, ask how is my culture, what do I eat - that was the New Zealand I came to.
"But I suppose society changes and evolves."
Atkinson's glowing reflections about her first days in Aotearoa are at odds with the fear she currently feels.
In the last few days she's felt anxious about simply taking her dog for a walk, or opening up the hairdressing salon she runs out of her home in the seaside town of Snells Beach in north Auckland.
That's because last week, she received an anonymous letter telling her to "hang [her] head in shame and revulsion" over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Addressed to 'Russian Margo', the unstamped, nameless note was left in her letterbox sometime last Friday - at the end of a week in which there was worldwide outcry at Russian soldiers' massacre of Ukrainian civilians in the city of Bucha.
Atkinson was told she was complicit in Russian President Vladimir Putin's war crimes and was no longer welcome in Snells Beach if she refused to denounce his continued invasion.
"Every Russian person around the world who remains silent is guilty," it read.
"Write to your relatives in Moscow and let them know how disgusted New Zealand and the west are at seeing whats (sic) happened. Any silent Russian is not welcome in Snells Beach or New Zealand."
"Putin is a mass-murdering savage war criminal."
Atkinson was in disbelief at what she was reading - not least of all because she has no connection at all to Russia. Her country of origin, Bolivia, is 15,000km away and the differences in culture, climate and geography could hardly be more pronounced.
"I'm from South America and I don't have any Russian looks - I'm short, brown skin, brown eyes. I have a South American appearance."
Her head is still spinning trying to work out who might have left the letter for her. She's been trying to remember which salon clients may have come by last week, but the writer remains a mystery for now.
Sadly, it's made her fearful of doing the things she normally looks forward to.
"It's a horrible feeling," she said.
"I don't feel happy to go and open my salon for customers… I'm not happy to go walk the dog. It really, really restricts me. Right now I feel a prisoner of my thoughts and home."
Atkinson suspects the anonymous writer thought she was Russian because she has a foreign accent. But she's annoyed they didn't even bother making sure they had her ethnicity right before penning the letter.
"I'm very emotional and very upset that this has happened," she told Newshub.
"The first line is still sticking in my head - 'hang your head in shame' - how much anger and frustration and hate, I can't believe this."
Even if she were Russian, Atkinson doesn't believe citizens of a country should be held accountable for the actions of their government. She says that's comparable to blaming the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II on everyday German citizens.
"The war in Ukraine, as a mother, as a human being, for sure no one wants an innocent [person] to die, a child to die, a mother to be raped, a young man to go and lose their life in war.
"No one wants that again… but what our governments do is out of our hands."
Atkinson believes the COVID-19 pandemic - and the two years of anxiety and isolation it wrought - may be responsible for some of the anger and frustration the letter writer expressed.
She suspects it may have been penned by an older person who was "feeding only on news and loneliness".
But in difficult times, she's calling on Kiwis to seek "peace and harmony" rather than get angry at one another and point out differences.
