Avren Childers new State Farm agent

DAYTON–The local State Farm Insurance Agency will have a permanent agent beginning March 1.

Avren Childers has been appointed as Dayton's State Farm insurance agent, succeeding Bette Lou Crothers, who retired at the end of July last year after 39 years serving local insurance needs. Interim agent Mike Stensrude managed the office at 201 E. Main Street until Childers was officially appointed by the company.

Childers was in the office this week, arranging her desk and preparing for the first official day.

"I love insurance," Childers said. "I love to protect people and I love to give good service."

"This opportunity came up and I was so excited to follow my passion, to follow my heart," she said. She was invited to be an intern with State Farm in October, 2020.

Childers currently lives in Hermiston, Ore., and is looking at real estate options in the area where she and husband Joe Childers, and 7-year-old son Joe Jr. might set up housekeeping. She also has a 23-year-old daughter, Lacey, who lives in Hermiston.

She was working two jobs when the opportunity with State Farm came up. She had been employed an area manager at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center, a three-day-a-week job she has held the past four and a half years until accepting the offer from State Farm to become an agent intern.

In 2017, State Farm agent Scott Smith gave her the opportunity to get into the insurance business through his agency in Kennewick. In six months, she was able to join a friend, Connie Landon, whose independent C & J Insurance office was in Umatilla. "It was much closer than driving to Kennewick every day," she said.

With Landon, she was appointed with Pacific Crest for property and casualty, and another company, Five Rings Financial, for life and health, and annuity, needs. While she worked with Wal-Mart, Childers maintained her insurance licenses.

Before joining Wal-Mart, from 2010 to 2016, she was a territory sales manager for AutoZone, covering an area stretching from Pasco to Wenatchee to Yakima and over to Walla Walla, plus Hermiston and Umatilla.

Childers was born in Grass Valley, Calif., and her family moved to Hermiston when she was two years old.