Liam Fontaine as he was dressed when he tackled the alleged offender in Napier.

A man dressed as a pink fairy for a charity fundraiser who stopped a would-be robber in his tracks says he reacted as a "natural instinct".

About 2pm on Sunday, a 42-year-old offender who allegedly attempted to rob a dairy on Hastings St, Napier, was chased down and tackled on Marine Parade by Napier landscaper Liam Fontaine, along with a 14-year-old boy.

Fontaine was on his way out of the dairy after buying icecream with his sister, Kristel, when the man walked past them into the shop.

"He passed me and kind of gave me a little bit of a shoulder barge, and I thought 'this is a suspicious-looking character'.

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"I chased him on foot with another 14-year-old fella. Then we got him on the ground on Marine Parade and the off-duty police officer stopped to help."

Fontaine had just returned from a local breast cancer awareness walk with Kristel, which he said he did for the first time this year in memory of his mother, who passed away from breast cancer in 2013.

"She definitely would be proud. My dad's pretty proud of me too, but I'm trying to stay a bit humble about it."

Fontaine said he just wanted to keep the community safe, and acted on impulse.

"There's a lot of kids out there that are our future and I'd advise people to do the same.

"I just thought I was doing what anybody else would do. I try my hardest to be a nice person."

Kristel Fontaine said she was the one who phoned police as her brother and the 14-year-old boy, named Michael, chased the offender down, and she also had a natural instinct to act quickly.

"​I'm training in police college so it was just in my nature to get him off the street.

"I said to [Liam], 'he's going to rob the place'. I got straight on to the phone while Michael and Liam chased him down the street. I asked the dairy owner to stay with my children in the car. I just thought 'he can't get away with this'.

"It's terrible behaviour, it's idiotic behaviour, it's definitely disgusting behaviour. It was just no second thought, we needed to stop him."

She said their mother would be "extremely proud" of what they both did, and she knew the boy's family was also proud.

"It takes guts for a 14-year-old to run after a grown man."

Liam said he was wearing bright pink fish-net stockings, a pink miniskirt, a pink sports top, bunny ears and fairy wings at the time, and had painted his goatee pink as part of participating in the walk.

"That costume's like, my signature costume now," he said.

The alleged offender appeared in Hastings District Court on Monday. He was granted interim name suppression and was remanded in custody until next month .