Ferice Childers came to Orofino 1986 after two years of retirement in North Idaho left him bored and ready to get back into law enforcement. After serving as the Orofino Police Chief for eight years a brush with death led him to decide to leave law enforcement for good.

He told a Lewiston Morning Tribune reporter that laying on his back not knowing if he was going to live after a potentially deadly blood clot traveled to his heart, after a routine knee surgery, brought a lot of things to mind. That is when he decided to retire for the second time, June 30, 1994.

He initially retired to north Idaho after 28 years in law enforcement in southern California. Childers started in law enforcement 1951 in Whittier, CA, and after working up to a detective position moved to Downey, CA, where he spent 13 years, mostly in command positions. In 1970, he was hired to form a police department and became chief in newly incorporated Bell Gardens, CA. He said he did not even have a paper clip or a place to put one.

When he first heard of the job in Orofino he did not even know where it was, but was looking for a place with a slower pace that he could put his skill and experience to good use. Childers did not know what to expect. During the first week, he responded to a report of a bear going through a trash can. He hurried over to see the bear fleeing over the hill. He used to say that his jurisdiction was 1.5 miles wide and 6.5 miles long.

Childers said that Orofino was in the depth of an economic downturn at the time he came, but things changed in the eight years he was chief and he felt the economy had stabilized. A lot of new people had come to town from all over making it hard to even find a place to rent.

Childers was born in 1925 and died in 2011. He is buried in Orofino's Riverside Cemetery.

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