Turn the corner on Church Street in Downtown Sandpoint, and it’s hard not to notice the large grey modern building that now houses the Kochava offices. The space used to house Inkwell—an office machine rental and office supply store—as well as a few doctors’ offices. Its upstairs was home to the local high school baseball team’s batting practice during the winter months. Before Kochava purchased it and moved its offices from the former Columbia Bank location in 2016, the larg

As children grow they become more independent. For parents this is both rewarding and challenging. When they hit late elementary school or early middle school, getting kids to open up, even about something as simple as how their day went, can be difficult. It is a time of great change in bodies and social structure, which can lead to feelings of jealousy and anger, loss of self-worth or being bullied. Children who bury these feelings can fall into drug and alcohol abuse as co

Bill Ouimet trudged through waist-high snow and reached a 16-by-20-foot cement building that would be, for the next quarter decade, his home. It was 1977, and Camp Stidwell, on the south end of Mirror Lake, was in need of a caretaker. Vandalism had creeped in, so his presence was going to stave it off. “I came here in January, and the old guy that hired me … we went around back, opened the door and I walked in. Cement floors, tin roof, no insulation,” Ouimet said. “He goes, ‘

Sean Bonner is quick to call himself a nerd, and during his 15 years living in North Idaho, he has come to realize that he is not alone. Through the Coeur d’Alene branch of the Innovation Collective, he and other self-avowed nerds have a place to come together and work toward the organization’s mission, which is to create “a global entrepreneurship movement in smaller towns,” nodding to the uniqueness of each town and the skills of each member. Charles Buck is the associate v

Darlene Richardson stood from her seat next to the window, lifted her phone and took another picture of the Spokane River. Then she sat, two chairs from her son Bert, and smiled. A cruise down the Spokane River was on her bucket list, she said, and One More Time made it happen, “before I got too sick.” “I haven’t found too many people willing to go the extra mile,” Darlene said. “I didn’t even know they existed.” Darlene, 77, and Bert took their three-hour cruise in mid-July,

John Howell III loves Thistles. When he retired, he got word from his wife’s college roommate that her family had found a boat out in Coeur d’Alene. She wondered if Howell might want to take a look at it. “It was sitting in a barn on their property,” Howell said. “I flew out, looked at it, rented a 26-foot truck and put the boat in the back of it and drove it back to North Carolina. It was worth it.” Turned out, the boat was No. 48, one of the first of 4,050 Thistles ever mad