With Press carrier Wolf, honesty's the only policy

Mike Wolf has five titanium rods in his back.

Two up and down, and three across.

The longer rods measure 17 inches.

He drives a Hyundai on a circuitous route 120 miles at night from Post Falls to Rathdrum, west to the state line and back.

He has done this for almost 20 years.

“I’ve gotten 36 drunk drivers off the road,” Wolf said.

He is no cop, or lone ranger. He delivers newspapers, so patrons can have their daily editions of the Coeur d’Alene Press and Spokesman-Review with coffee by 5:30 each morning.

Wolf is disabled because he wrecked his back decades ago lifting a tractor tire off the ground on a bet for a bottle of Johnny Walker blue.

He isn’t proud of this, but there it is.

“Sometimes I’m not too smart,” the 57-year-old Rathdrum man said.

And then there is this:

When Wolf finds valuables on the road at night while delivering newspapers, he gives them back.

“It’s just something I think everyone should do,” Wolf said.

When he found a big, purple, thick-handled purse on the Hauser Lake Road last week, he spent time away from his delivery schedule walking 30 yards in both directions, shining his headlights, picking up makeup tubes, a wallet loaded with credit cards and cash, a passport and a boatload of accoutrements common to many purses.

“It was jam-packed,” Wolf said.

Because he could find no address and didn’t feel the need to invade someone’s privacy looking for one, Wolf called the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office and turned the purse over to a deputy.

He has done this in the past. The purse Wolf found July 26 was the third purse he has picked up on his route since he started delivering newspapers in 1999, and county lawmen appreciate his honesty.

“In this day when so much dishonesty seems to be prevalent,” Capt. Dan Soumas of the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office said, “I find this to be an exceedingly rare event when a portion of society views nothing wrong with the theft of another’s property.”

Returning purses is one of many good Samaritan deeds Wolf is known for.

He has over the past two decades on the route also reported vehicle crashes and rollovers, usually from people with too much booze under their belts who opted to drive home in the wee hours and didn’t arrive.

“There’s a lot of stuff we see out there at night that most people don’t see,” said Wolf, whose reputation for punctuality and a proclivity for honesty go beyond his paper route.

He volunteers as a coach and has worked many years with parks and recreation sports programs in Post Falls, where players appreciate him as a role model for his positivity. For this, he has received honorary awards from teams as far away as St. Maries.

In two decades of deliveries he has had 23 days off, he said. Four of them were because of heart attacks he’s suffered. He’s had a week of deaths in his family, and the rest were vacation days, he said.

He doesn’t question this. He does, however, wonder why he is given a pat on the back for returning someone else’s property.

“It’s kind of a sad statement about our country,” Wolf said. “It’s kind of like helping old people across the street. It should be automatic.”