The son of a New Zealand police officer, who went on to be a Chief Detective Inspector in Hong Kong Police, policing was always a career Loughrin saw himself doing. At the age of 19, he joined police, starting out in South Auckland where after two years he became a detective. One of his first investigations was the murder of a police employee. He recalls being taken to the scene by the 16-year-old offender who showed police where he had done the fatal stabbing. After moving to Waikato with his family in 2011 he developed a career in investigations, working predominantly in CIB and Organised Crime in Hamilton City.