Alison Boggs

An 18-year-old Coeur d’Alene High School graduate is fighting for his life in a Missoula hospital after his car flipped on Lolo Pass on the Montana-Idaho border two weeks ago. Brenden Nichols, salutatorian of the 2011 class, Eagle Scout, church youth leader, track team member and accomplished photographer, has been in a coma since the Oct. 15 accident. His neck also was broken and a lung collapsed, said his mother, Jodie Nichols. The family is researching moving him to a neurological rehabilitation center closer to home, she said.

Jim Smith returned to his Post Falls home late one night last week to find his side door ajar. In the bedroom, he found jewelry scattered on the floor and several Black Hills gold rings missing. He and his late wife, who died 10 years ago from cancer, had collected them together over several years.

A family is watching TV on a cold Sunday afternoon when a man bursts in, calls them an obscene name and attacks with a hammer, aiming for their heads. One woman is killed. Another suffers a severe head injury that steals pieces of her memory and speech. Two other family members are beaten but escape with minor injuries. It sounds like something straight out of a horror movie, but that’s what Yvonne Wallis, her son, daughter-in-law and grandson experienced last Dec. 19 in Bayview, Idaho. Their next-door neighbor, Larry Cragun, was arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder, and is in jail awaiting trial in January. His bail is set at $1 million.

Coeur d’Alene City Councilman Ron Edinger said Wednesday he’s the victim of a smear campaign because he believes the proposed makeover of McEuen Field should be put to a public vote. In a statement released to the media, Edinger said he never used his position to help three of his grandsons get jobs with the city. Two of them have worked part-time for the city for years, he said; a third worked seasonally for the streets department.

Peg Kingery knows the feeling that comes over her when she steps out into a river and casts her line, hoping a cutthroat trout will rise to the fly. “It’s a tremendously healing, peaceful, fulfilling activity,” the Moscow fly fisherman said earlier this week while fishing on the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. “If fly-fishing can be even a tiny bit to them what it is to me, that would be awesome.”

A golden eagle found grounded as a baby flew free for the first time Thursday morning after more than a year of rehabilitation with a Coeur d’Alene raptor biologist. Jane Fink, executive director of Birds of Prey Northwest, released the eagle during the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s annual Elders Dinner gathering, attended by hundreds of people from tribes throughout the Northwest.

On the eve of their districtwide cross-country race, Seltice Elementary School students in Post Falls received race tips from two marathoners who work as personal trainers at a nearby athletic club. Heath Wiltse, a 25-time marathoner, led the students Tuesday in stretching exercises before they took to the field for laps. He swung his legs back and forth, jogged in place, then walked the gym’s perimeter, squatting into deep knee bends with each step.

A Smithsonian Institution conservator gently unwrapped a 110-year-old doll Thursday, preparing it for installation in a new exhibit at Old Mission State Park in Cataldo, Idaho. “It’s something coming back to us,” Coeur d’Alene tribal elder Felix Aripa said of the doll crafted by a tribe member. “I say welcome home,” he said as he watched Greta Hansen of the National Museum of Natural History lay three dolls – a Native American man, woman and child – on a table.

Anticipating both a November 2012 ballot initiative and state legislation to legalize medicinal marijuana, social services agencies in Coeur d’Alene are organizing to educate the public about what they call the dangers of drug legalization. “Our whole goal is we want our people educated so we can put pressure on the legislators not to pass it. We don’t want it. I know there’s a lot of people that do want it, but there’s a lot of people that don’t,” said Anita Kronvall, director of the Kootenai County Substance Abuse Council, which is supporting the Kootenai Alliance for Children and Families in hosting two mid-October events.

A nonprofit ice arena in Coeur d’Alene that has been rebuilding since a 2008 roof collapse received a major boost Thursday when Frontier Communications announced a seven-year, $175,000 contribution. As a result, the Kootenai Youth Recreation Organization ice arena on West Seltice Way will be renamed Frontier Ice Arena. The Fortune 500 company provides communication services in rural America and acquired much of Verizon’s landline operations in 2010. The agreement calls for the company to donate $25,000 per year for seven years, Daniel McCarthy, Frontier’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, announced at a Thursday news conference.

In dozens of camps along Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River, Coeur d’Alene Indians used stone tools to pound and grind meat, berries and roots. The handmade tools would be left in the water, where they would continue to be shaped by its flow. Dozens of the tools were used by Indian families on the tribe’s aboriginal lands dating to ancient times, said Cliff SiJohn, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s cultural awareness director. Since the tribe stopped using the lands, numerous artifacts have been picked up by visitors and kept as souvenirs, he said.