Pat Raffee is Kootenai County chief deputy county clerk. She was hired in 2011 by County Clerk Cliff Hayes, who died in office last December. She currently works under Jim Brannon, who was appointed interim county clerk by the Kootenai County Commission. Raffee's background includes contract positions as executive director of two Idaho urban renewal agencies (Moscow and Post Falls), extensive consulting in the private sector and a recent appointment to the Idaho Commission for Libraries by Gov. Butch Otter.

I've heard you described as a woman who doesn't come unglued easily - a person who displays grace under pressure.

I'm flattered. I do believe that people generally feel more confident when the people around them are calm, so I try to maintain a sense of calm and I do meditate every day. I'm a very passionate person and I know that sometimes I need to back off a bit so I don't overwhelm people with that passion.

Where did it all start for you?

I did most of my growing up in Twin Falls. When I was young, I wanted to someday work in a fire tower and look for forest fires - mostly because I wanted to read all day and be in the woods.

My big dreams involved getting out of Twin Falls and getting away from my family, even though I realized later that my folks did the best they could. My mother died when I was young and my father had a major problem with alcohol. By the time I got out of high school - we had moved to South Texas by then because my father wanted to be around the grapefruit business - I had learned quite a bit about how to solve problems.

When I got to the University of Arizona, I had two jobs, one scholarship, one loan and a sewing business.

Were you in a big hurry to get out in the world and earn a living?

I couldn't see the relevance of just sitting back and accumulating debt. I knew early on that I loved to work.

My first job was in advertising. What I learned on the job was that the ability to solve problems was not as common a skill as I'd expected it to be. I got promotions simply because I could take care of things - it was wild and it was fun.

How long did you stay in advertising?

I moved to California and did in-house advertising for a firm, but when they sold their retail division, there was no more advertising. I ended up marrying the owner of the company, and Alan Raffee became an enormous influence on me.

He belonged to the Young Presidents Organization, a group that prided itself on leadership development. They had monthly meetings and spouses were invited. The whole education process was fascinating for me.

Did it nudge you in a different direction?

I was looking for work back then and most of the people I knew were interested in running their businesses better. I was reading a lot of business books and I noticed that though the people in my group had the same books as me, they weren't reading them because they didn't have the time.

So, I got the idea of starting a business writing summaries of the key ideas of non-fiction business books and then selling them on subscription. I even included an audio cassette tape for people who wanted to listen to them while they were driving.

Where did you go from there?

Well, after that, people said, "She must know something because she has read all those books." So they hired me to do management training.

Then I got recruited by a headhunter to be the development and training manager for Citicorp's card products group. Citicorp eventually became my first consulting client.

What did you see that others didn't?

I understood systems and problem solving. I had been doing the same thing for years - find the people who can give you more, be clear about your messages and then tell them "good job" when they've done it well.

What brought you to Coeur d'Alene?

By 1992, Southern California was no longer a place I wanted to live. I knew what I wanted: Mountains, four-seasons, small community and near a city with a symphony. Coeur d'Alene turned out to be that place.

Once I got here, I discovered the largest employers were governments. In 1993, I became part of a joint venture between NIC and the Community Colleges of Spokane. I was also running my own consulting business, the Raffee Company.

How did you end up in the clerk's office?

I had been here less than a year when I met Cliff Hayes. He was in my presentation skills training program with other department heads from Post Falls.

Cliff won the election for county clerk in 2010 and took office in 2011. He appointed me chief deputy clerk.

Cliff Hayes was my friend for 20 years. He was my emergency contact.

What does the clerk's office do?

The clerk's division has five main parts and they're all administrative.

We do the paperwork for the district court, all the paperwork for elections, county assistance/welfare, documents for the Recorder and auditing tasks such as preparing the county budget, monitoring that budget and paying all the county's bills. We also disburse property tax revenues to the taxing districts.

How satisfying is government work?

In some cases, government work is a little disconcerting because it's hard to say what you've done by the end of the day. A lot of times I have nothing accountable but the fact that I said "good job" to a person who actually did do something accountable.

Can you give me an example?

Say there's an employee with a pile of checks on her desk that she needs to sort. In her life she might have to deal with the sickness of a child, family situations, deadlines and other employees who have delayed getting her the information she needs to do her job.

One of the challenges for me as her supervisor is to find out what boulders I can roll out of her way to make her job easier.

Tell me about the bonuses.

There were three things Cliff Hayes and I wanted. We wanted people to be accountable for their jobs because, as it was, we weren't meeting a lot of deadlines. The second thing was service and the third was transparency - as in "tell them the truth."

When we came up with the bonus idea, we realized the people at the County had never received bonuses before, at least in the clerk's division. They were relatively small amounts of money - the first year we gave out eight bonuses, the second 12 and in the third year we awarded bonuses to 18 people.

The people who get bonuses here are the people who run into roadblocks and go over and under and around them. The conversations I have with those people are priceless - the days I have those conversations, I feel like I mattered.

Will you run for the county clerk's job?

I honestly don't know.

You've recently been appointed to the Idaho Commission for Libraries and you're also president of the Post Falls Library Foundation. Why are libraries so special for you?

If we didn't have libraries, we would be in trouble. Libraries have been a common thread throughout my life. I went there often as a child and I've never stopped going. I've made major life decisions that have turned out well for me because I've gotten good information at the library.

The Post Falls Library will turn 100 next year. The Post Falls Library Foundation exists because it's clear there's a limit to what taxpayers can fund. We need to secure the future of libraries by looking to other sources of funding that are not property taxes - sources such as donations, foundations and grants.

Looking back, has life been fun so far?

Absolutely. I've had some wonderfully interesting challenges and that's what makes me happy: contributing to the community and the well-being of either my clients or the organization that employs me. I like to make it safe for people to continue learning new things.