HUCKLEBERRIES: At the right place, at the right time

A broken-down 1966 Buick saved a 4-year-old girl’s life 45 years ago.

On Sept. 15, 1980, Ron Manning eased his clunker to the side of the street after its engine stalled at Government Way and Boekel Road, north of Hayden.

As passenger Ron Grier exited the car, he saw a flash of red in a ditch, among thick bushes, a few feet away. Manning, 16, and Grier, 19, both of Rathdrum, had found Jodi Aldridge.

Jodi, wearing only a red shirt, was barely alive, suffering from dehydration, scratches and a skull fracture. At 3 feet tall with blonde, curly hair, Jodi had lost 7 of her 32 pounds after her abduction from a Hayden day care four days before.

She wasn’t sexually molested.

Panicked, Manning and Grier flagged down the sheriff’s Sgt. Pierce Clegg on nearby U.S. 95 and directed him to Jodi, who was curled in a fetal position.

“When I put my hands down to touch her, she moved her arms to cover up her face,” the future county sheriff told The Press. “I could see her eyes were glassy. She was in shock.”

An intensive search for Jodi began after she was snatched from father Rob Aldridge’s Acres Learning Center on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 1980. She had been asleep in the day care while three adults and 22 children were in the backyard.

Some children saw a strange man, including Jodi’s foster sister, Marie, 12. She said the man held Jodi with his right hand as he drove off in an old flatbed pickup, dirty green with wooden side racks. She described him as 20 to 30 years old, tall, bearded and muscular.

Rob Aldridge told The Press: “It is almost as if he (the kidnapper) knew the schedule of the day care center. He came at the very end of the nap period. Jodi was the only one left sleeping in the front room. The others had gone out back to play.”

The kidnapping launched a statewide manhunt. Police routinely pulled over gray or green flatbed pickups. Under hypnosis, a child provided a partial license with the numbers 23545.

But the abductor remained at large on Jodi’s fifth birthday six months later. And still is.

Meanwhile, according to her father, Jodi behaved “as though it never had happened.”

In the interim, Manning and Grier were honored by local municipalities. But they turned down the $25,000 reward offered by Rob and Dawn Aldridge for the return of their daughter.

Manning didn’t dismiss as a coincidence the timely breakdown of his car: “Something like this makes you think of God,” he told The Press. “God was looking over that girl.”

Safe than sorry

Never has a 2-by-6 board caused a fuss like the one that caught fire and smoldered out at a Hayden area explosives plant Sept. 13, 1995.

Before officials signaled all-clear, an evacuation alarm had displaced 300 homes and businesses within a mile of Government Way and Lancaster Road.

Most of the evacuees were unaware that Rimrock Explosives operated nearby.

First responders were told that the structure was fully engulfed in flame and that the plant contained 200 tons of explosive material used for mining and construction. The volatile mix had a blast potential 75 times greater than the bomb that destroyed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City earlier in the year.

Roads were closed. Kootenai Medical Center was alerted. Lake City High and the Sand Trap Restaurant at Hayden became evacuation centers.

And then, three hours later, Rimrock Explosives workers inspected the building. No inferno. No active fire. Just a smoking board. Employees were trained to run if they saw flames.

Later, company officials told grumbling locals that it was better to be safe than sorry.

Reward shared

Four Good Samaritans shared a $100,000 reward for the 2005 rescue of kidnap victim Shasta Groene at Coeur d’Alene Denney’s: Amber (Deahn) Peace, Linda Olson, Nick Chapman and Chris Dolan.

On Sept. 15, 2005, FBI special agent Timothy Fuhrmann hailed the four as heroes and gave each a check for $25,000.

In mid-May 2005, Joseph Edward Duncan III murdered three members of Shasta’s family in their Wolf Lodge home and kidnapped the 8-year-old girl and her brother Dylan, 9. He later tortured, molested, and killed Dylan.

In the early morning of July 2, 2005, Duncan stopped at Denney’s.

There, waitress Amber (Deahn) Peace recognized Shasta and offered her a milkshake and coloring material to delay Duncan’s departure. Manager Linda Olson called the police. Patrons Nick Chapman and Chris Dolan dialed 911 and copied the license number on Duncan’s Jeep Laredo.

Later, Duncan pleaded guilty to all his crimes against the Groene-McKenzie family and was sentenced to death. On March 28, 2021, he died of brain cancer on Indiana's Death Row.

Fan Mail

Anne Nelson of Coeur d’Alene responds to the Huckleberries item (Aug. 18) about the 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake (near Yellowstone) that killed four members of a Dalton Gardens family: “Nels, my husband to be and a newly commissioned Salvation Army officer, was at his first appointment in Billings, Mont. Since Billings was the nearest (Salvation Army) corps, he was sent to help the earthquake victims. We normally wrote to each other daily. So, needless to say, not hearing from him for a few weeks was a bit hard on this then 21-year-old, also at her first S.A. appointment, in Denver.”

Huckleberries

• Poet’s Corner: The yellow bus came by today/and carried summertime away — The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“School”).

• A Cut Above: In September 1970, North Idaho Junior College welcomed 11 new teachers, including two who later transformed Coeur d’Alene: Tony Stewart and John Stone. A political science instructor, Stewart helped found the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations. Stone, a data processing instructor, built Riverstone.

• Start Packing: Sandy Emerson jokes that the late Duane Hagadone replaced him with red geraniums. In the mid-1980s, Sandy managed the chamber of commerce in a small building at Second and Sherman. And Duane needed the space to finish the front lawn of the future Coeur d’Alene Resort — and to plant more of his signature geraniums. So, Sandy, a former military officer, saluted, said “yes, sir,” and packed.

• Scram!: When Richard Butler and his bankrupt Aryans left their compound, they took little with them. After winning a $6.3 million civil verdict against Butler's group in September 2000, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued successfully that nothing should leave the premises but the neo-Nazis. Then, the winners destroyed everything on site. So, no one got souvenirs.

Parting shot

Property owner LeAnn Anderson deserves credit for preserving H.C. Taylor’s 1929 house at 621 Lakeside Ave., across from the Coeur d’Alene post office.

In 1996, she poured $209,122 ($431,120 today) into the rundown apartment complex to transform it into four condominiums, according to historian Stephen Shepperd. She bought the building after a 1993 fire damaged it and killed apartment tenant Kimberly Parfrey, 35.

The vacant, fire-weakened structure attracted vagrants who ignored safety hazards.

In August 1995, after fielding complaints about the eyesore, Councilman Dan English told The Press: “It’s hard to tell if it’s coming down or going up.”

It stayed up.

And today it’s a pleasing part of downtown Coeur d’Alene, named Northern Aire Condos.

• • •

D.F. Oliveria can be contacted at [email protected].

    Rescuers Ron Grier, left, and Ron Manning.
  

    Rob and Dawn Aldridge hold their rescued child in 1980.
  

    In this 1980 Press photo, an arrow shows the spot where Jodi Aldridge was found near Boekel Road. Ron Manning’s Buick is also shown.
  

    Sheriff Pierce Clegg, far left, and other First Responders plan to evacuate everyone within a mile of Rimrock Explosives in 1995.
  

    FBI agents Timothy Fuhrmann, left, and Brent Robbins, right, congratulate Shasta Groene’s rescuers, from left, Amber (Deahn) Peace, Linda Olson, Nick Chapman and Christopher Donlan in 2005.
  

    Amber (Deahn) Peace, the Denney’s waitress who first spotted Shasta Groene on July 2, speaks to Idaho State Police Capt. Wayne Longo at a rewards ceremony honoring her and three others.
  

    Riverstone developer John Stone began his career in Coeur d’Alene by teaching data processing at North Idaho Junior College.
  

    Sandy Emerson moves chamber of commerce items to a new Sherman Avenue location in 1985. Also pictured are Jim Faucher and Sylvia Waterson of Kootenai Medical Center.
  

    Richard Butler of the Aryan Nations speaks at a press conference Sept. 12, 2000, after the county sheriff was ordered to seize his property.
  

    Before (1995) and after (2025) photos show what is today the historic Northern Aire Condos at 621 Lakeside Ave.
  

    Before (1995) and after (2025) photos show what is today the historic Northern Aire Condos at 621 Lakeside Ave.