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Catherine Champre could feel the planet dying last summer, and she wasn’t about to sit around and watch it happen.
“I could see so much excess, so much greed, in this valley as well as globally,” Champre explained to dinner-party guests from the head of her 47-foot exotic redwood table last Saturday. “And it was really disgusting me.”
Champre, along with her husband, Dick Champre, lives in an 11,000-square-foot home on a 20-acre property north of Ketchum with sweeping, spectacularly manicured lawns and decorative ponds that illegally draw water from the Big Wood River.
“I could hear Mother Earth calling for a warrior — someone who was willing to make great personal sacrifices to defend and ultimately save her,” Champre said, holding back tears. “I was willing to be that warrior.”
So Champre didn’t hesitate.
“I bought a 2025 Mini Cooper,” she said with a cold-stone stare.
She also customized her license plate to read “MINMLST,” so that she could really make a statement about what she called “true minimalist living rooted in deep personal sacrifice.”
She added, “I had to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.”
The guests, who had been hanging on her every word with exaggerated wide eyes, erupted in applause.
“Am I a hero?” she asked while dining on a platter of exotic meats, including Galápagos turtle and baby bald eagle that had been masterfully prepared by her chefs. “I don’t know. Probably. But I do know that I am an Earth warrior, and I will defend her until the end.”
This time, all 14 dinner-party guests rose from their seats and showered Champre with a standing ovation. Shortly thereafter, insincere flattery began to surge, eventually reaching absurd heights.
But then Chauncey Stonebridge III, who lives in a modest 7,000-square-foot Ketchum home with his two English cocker spaniels and a staff of seven, raised a sobering concern: How would the Mini navigate adverse road conditions during heavy snow?
“Aha!” Champre exclaimed as she leapt from the table with flair and instructed her guests to follow her to their 3,000-square-foot garage. Inside, a full-time mechanic tended to a fleet of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Hummers.
Champre then guided her guests to the center of the garage and slowly began removing a cover from a mysterious hulking, bulging vehicle — like a woman slowly undressing a new, male lover.
There, sparkling like a diamond beneath the garage’s divinely illuminated chandelier, stood the Apocalypse HellFire 2.0 6×6 — a truly necessary automobile if there ever was one. (Don’t miss our upcoming story on test driving the HellFire 2.0.)
The guests broke into applause again while Champre’s husband, Dick, stood watching silently from the dimly lit corner of the garage.
“This is my real man,” Champre said about her Apocalypse as the applause continued. “Isn’t he an absolute stud, ladies?”
More applause. Over the roar, many women could be heard pleading with their spouses, “Can I get one, please?”
Champre used her hands to tone down the cheers.
“I actually ran over a Mini the other day — I simply didn’t see it,” she added with a raucous laugh, which shook her chandelier. “That’s what this bitch can do.”
Stonebridge III, ever the jokester, leapt at the opportunity to display his comedic genius by asking Champre whether she was referring to the HellFire or herself.
“Both!” Champre replied, prompting more raucous laughter and applause.
From there, the evening devolved into a wine-soaked smug-fest that was completely void of authenticity.
The Apocalypse HellFire is “powered by a 520-horsepower 392 HEMI V-8,” according to the manufacturer’s website. “This six-wheel-drive monster offers the perfect combination of aggressive style, luxury and power.
“Finished in a bold Gobi Desert Off-Road Armor Coating, this HellFire is designed to turn heads wherever it goes, while its custom features ensure you never back down from a challenge.”
With wine flowing like a fountain, Champre decided to fire up her HellFire to give guests a quick demonstration of her hunk in action, despite her husband Dick’s objections.
It was at that moment that the evening came to a sudden, smashing end as Champre slipped her “stud” into the wrong gear, lost control and flattened two vehicles belonging to her guests, including Stonebridge III’s customized 2012 Bentley Mulsanne.
Her joyride also caused serious damage to Barbara and Thomas Golden’s new Bell 206L helicopter, which was parked on the north lawn adjacent to the driveway. The pilot, who was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the cockpit, suffered what friends described as an emotional breaking point and was flown via an Air St. Luke’s helicopter to Boise for additional treatment.
“I am so [expletive] tired of these rich [expletive] and their pea-sized brains,” said the pilot, Ed Rotor. “My son is 11 years old and he has more maturity than these [expletive].”
Fortunately, Champre had plenty of room in her 6×6 HellFire, which holds eight passengers, to drive most of her guests home. She did, however, cause three more accidents on the way, including mistakenly driving through an entire house in Elkhorn, triggering a massive gas explosion. Thankfully, nobody was home, and Champre insisted the HellFire is “fire resilient,” whatever that means.
While Champre enjoys entertaining guests with tales of her Mini and her committed fight to protecting Mother Earth, most of the vehicle’s use is actually confined to the inside of her home, which contains miles of hallways.
“The Mini has become a great way to get around our modest home,” she said in all seriousness. “And it gets really good gas mileage.”
She added that “sometimes when you make a sacrifice for the good of all of humanity and truly devote your life to living with and for Mother Earth, she blesses you with gifts in return.”
Champre then told me to “think globally, act locally,” words she lives by.
“Make sure that quote goes into the paper and is attributed to me because I created it right before my dinner party,” she said.
