Russ Mikel will retire as coroner
BY ISAIAH FRIZZELL
Coroner Russ Mikel will step back from the role he has held for decades in Blaine County. Mikel is one of 44 elected coroners in the state. He is also a mortician, a job he fell into. He was taking a year off from college when he attended a friend’s funeral and a mortician introduced himself and asked if he’d be interested in an apprenticeship. Three months later, he was on the job. He hasn’t really stopped since.
That chance encounter set the course for more than four decades of service in the Wood River Valley such as helping to start the area’s ambulance service in the mid-1970s, building its early EMT training program, operating the valley’s only locally run funeral home, and serving as Blaine County coroner. This year, Mikel will step down from the public role, though not from his job as the county’s only mortician.
Most people know Mikel through Wood River Chapel, on Main Street in Hailey. The coroner’s role is separate. Contracted through the county and focused purely on determining cause and manner of death at the time it occurs, his mortuary science training, which he describes as “primarily pre-med-type things,” prepared him well for both sides of the work. The county contracts the position, and he’s run it out of his own facility for the past 40 years.
Mikel’s final stretch in the role has been complicated by new Ada County protocols governing how coroners must approach death scenes to qualify autopsy cases. The primary issue is timing — law enforcement arrives first, and the coroner’s process adjusts accordingly. Public statements from local law enforcement have framed the situation in sharper terms.
“These are people I’ve dealt with for years,” Mikel said. “I’m really sorry to hear the public comments that have been made, because we’ve gotten along good before. And we still can. We just need to follow the guidelines.”
Mikel noted with some encouragement that county commissioners are now working toward dedicated county facilities — a development he sees as a step in the right direction.
Mikel puts the requirements of the job into proportion: three-quarters of the job, by his estimate, is spent with families—listening, helping them plan, letting them talk about the person they’ve lost. “It just feels really good to be able to help someone when you know they need the help.”
He won’t close the funeral home until he finds the right person to carry it forward. “I feel like I owe the community to have that resource.”
Mikel grew up in Twin Falls and has lived in the Wood River Valley long enough to watch it change dramatically. He raised a family here, worked search and rescue, trained German shepherds as search dogs, and has no plans to leave. “We’ve been a part of this community for a long time,” he said. “I want it to be a good thing when we turn it over to someone else.”
