COEUR d’ALENE — It was a contentious time in Coeur d’Alene.

The notorious white supremacist group, the Aryan Nations, had received a parade permit from the city, and protesters were pouring into the downtown area ready to rumble.

A young police officer was assigned to the dubious task of keeping the peace or at least maintaining some semblance of order. Lt. Ron Hotchkiss was briefed on the game plan the previous night, which called for crowd-control officers to be stationed near Independence Point where the parade was planned to conclude with a rally. And violence was expected to ensue.

Hotchkiss was assigned to get the parade underway down Sherman Avenue from Seventh Street, then drive his patrol car directly to Independence Point. Instead, he decided to accompany the parade down Sherman.

Good thing.

At Fourth Street, protesters had formed an arm-in-arm barricade. Anger wasn’t simmering anymore. It was about to boil over.

“That stopped everything. More of the crowd moved in, and the Aryans wanted to fight them,” Hotchkiss said.

With no crowd control immediately available, Hotchkiss made another quick decision. He diverted the parade south on Fourth to Front Street and on to Independence Point where he told Aryan leader Richard Butler, “Your parade is over.”

“Nobody knew where we went. Nobody knew where the Aryans were,” he said. “They were gone.”

It was one of those unforgettable memories for Hotchkiss. But it was also an undeniable indication the sleepy little mill town he so fondly remembers growing up in was rapidly changing.

Hotchkiss came from Minnesota to the Fort Grounds near North Idaho College in 1957 at age 6. He and his brother, Mark, moved enough items into their new home to create a bedroom, then headed directly to Lake Coeur d’Alene.

“The lake was the place. That’s where you went,” said the still-youthful 65-year-old father of two and grandfather of three. “I had a mask, fins and a snorkel, so I was treasure hunting as much as I could.”

In addition to submerged treasure, Hotchkiss found ways to get into trouble.

The freight trains still ran through Coeur d’Alene then to the Potlatch lumber mill. So Hotchkiss and his friends would hop on to get a ride to downtown. The trains would occasionally stall at the intersection of Garden Avenue and Northwest Boulevard, temporarily holding up traffic from the Fort Grounds. Hotchkiss was sitting on the edge of a flatcar, and the lead car waiting at the intersection was driven by his mother.

“There was nowhere for me to hide. I could see the steam coming out of her head,” he said. “I got home and it was just endless. I didn’t do that again.”

Another favorite antic was to jump onto the revolving arm at the waste water treatment plant.

“If you fell off it you were in this (sewage) goo. You were pretty yucked up,” he said. “So you’d go down to the river and wash everything off, then stand in the teepee burner at the DeArmond stud mill and dry off. That thing was hot.”

Hotchkiss also melded into corporate picnics at City Park and would win enough prize money from kids games to head to the Playland Pier after the picnic closed down.

Then there were forts to be built near the “bums’ jungle” along the tracks just west of the former Osprey restaurant — forts that were fashioned from materials scavenged from across the Spokane River in the city landfill on Blackwell Island.

“Living in the Fort Grounds was like living in an amusement park. You had the woods, the river, the lake, the park. The whole Fort Grounds was made up of kids,” he said. “We’d have breakfast and take off. You’d just have to get home by dark. As long as you’d show up and weren’t bleeding too badly, there were never any questions.”

In the Fort Grounds he also taught himself how to scuba dive, which would become a lifelong pursuit.

Hotchkiss went on to Coeur d’Alene High School where he describes himself as an “average student.” He participated in wrestling and football but got tired of “getting beat up the way you needed to in sports.”

Instead, he was enamored with cars. Fast cars.

“I had one of the hottest cars in town. I was 20 years old and I had a 1969 Roadrunner,” he said. “I put a hot engine in it and loved driving it, but there was always the problem of getting a ticket.”

Ironically, it was hot cars that drew Hotchkiss to law enforcement.

Shortly after graduating from CHS, he met a cute Post Falls student. They dated for three years and married in 1972. Sally Hotchkiss worked for years in the administration office of the Coeur d’Alene School District.

Hotchkiss was working at a gas station on East Sherman after high school, and that’s where the city police department serviced its patrol cars.

An officer was fueling up when he got a call.

“He threw it into drive, literally smoked the tires and hit Sherman in a full broadside, lights and siren going,” Hotchkiss said. “I stood there totally in awe, thinking he can do that and never worry about getting a ticket. I couldn’t get that out of my head.”

Hotchkiss was sold, and at the next opportunity asked a cop how he could join. He was picked up as a reserve officer — requiring him to buy his own revolver, uniform and boots. He was then hired as a dispatcher and later as a street officer after riding two nights in a patrol car.

During the ensuing 30 years with CPD, Hotchkiss created a training program for the department that was adopted by Boise PD. He also computerized the patrol cars and created the CARE program, which went national. And he served a three-year stint as coordinator for the construction of a new police station during the height of the Aryan showdown.

“I was busy,” he said.

Yet he still found time to collect and restore antique cars at his 2-acre home and workshop near Harbor Island on the Spokane River. He has one from every decade since the 1890s until relatively recently, including a 1907 Maxwell and a DeLorean.

“They are my trophies,” he said. “So it’s like the six-point elk on the wall.”

But he also has more than his share of souvenirs from a virtual career of scuba. He retrieved a Civil War rifle and bugle from a river while attending the FBI Academy in Virginia. Lake Coeur d’Alene steamer parts adorn the walls of his home. He raised a crate of candlestick telephones from the lake as well as 26 slot machines that were dumped during the 1950s after gambling raids. Two still work.

He said he couldn’t be more pleased with his present and his past in Coeur d’Alene.

“If I could be the poster child for life after employment, I”d like to think that I am,” he said. “And I still think I lived in the best place in a great city because it was our playground. Best place on Earth.”