COEUR d’ALENE — A 65-year-old Hayden man who was arrested a year ago during a police sting operation after driving to a Coeur d’Alene hotel to have sex with a 15-year-old boy will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Ronald Nold told the court Wednesday that he was not a predator, that the police — in the form of an officer pretending to be a teenager — had reached out to him, and not the other way around, when he was arrested August 2017 in Coeur d’Alene after replying to an ad in the personal section of Craigslist.

“They kept texting me,” Nold told First District Judge John Mitchell at his sentencing hearing in Coeur d’Alene.

There was no victim in the latest case against him, Nold said. He hadn’t intended to exploit anyone a year ago when he drove his red Silverado pickup truck to the Springhill Suites in Seltice Way for a rendezvouz with what he thought was a teenage boy, only to find police waiting for him.

After hearing from deputy prosecutor Rebecca Perez, who asked for a sentence of 25 years to life behind bars, and Nold’s attorney Scott Nass, who urged the court to consider a lenient five to seven-year sentence, Mitchell sentenced Nold to a fixed term of life for one count of enticing a child by using the internet, and another count of being a habitual sex offender.

In a statement he read to the court, Nold denied being a recurrent sex offender, arguing instead that his last conviction was more than two decades ago, but Mitchell reminded him that he had pleaded guilty to the habitual sex offender charge.

After referring to an extensive hit list of young people who Nold had targeted during his lifetime — at least 70 young people, including students when he taught and coached at a Washington high school — Mitchell said the tally could be well over 100.

Mitchell noted two cases in which Nold was caught being around young people while he was on parole despite court orders against it. He pointed out Nold’s deception, and his efforts to hide his addiction from authorities.

“You simply can’t put on the brakes,” Mitchell said.

Shackled, and wearing orange prison pajamas, a bald and frail-looking Nold rocked back and forth in his chair at the defense counsel’s bench as he listened to Mitchell run through a history of abuse Nold had suffered beginning as a boy at the hands of a stepfather, a stepmother, and a distant uncle.

Mitchell noted that Nold had extended the pattern by sexually abusing others, and he asked how someone with such a history of sexual torment could bring the same pain into the lives of other innocent victims.

“The damage you’ve done to scores, and maybe hundreds of human beings … You can’t stop, that is evidenced by what you did last August,” Mitchell said.

The only way to ensure there would be no more victims was by locking Nold up for the remainder of his life, Mitchell said.

“I have the discretion,” the judge said. “A life sentence is appropriate and not anything less.”

Nold was a former secretary, treasurer and president at the Coeur d’Alene Eagles until 2015 and a secretary at the Eagles in Hayden and Post Falls until 2017. He told police he grew up in Texas, moved to Las Vegas and earned a college degree — he has a master’s degree, according to court records — before moving to Idaho, where he started his own accounting business.

He taught Bible school at a Baptist church in Athol and worked as a missionary in the Philippines. When he was a teacher, he told police, he had sex with a student for which he served time in prison.

Nold was convicted of three counts of sodomy in Malheur County, Ore., in 1993, one count of indecent liberties and one count of attempted indecent liberties in Okanogan County, Wash., 18 years ago.

In 1996, Nold was convicted of embezzlement for stealing more than $300 from the owner of a Coeur d’Alene Arby’s, where he worked as an accountant.