Friends of former Clatskanie police officer Joseph Lee Harrison, who is accused of stealing Vicodin and OxyContin from two Clatskanie homes, say the alleged crimes don’t jibe with the man they know.

“I’ve known him since I was a kid,” said Lance Ritchie of Clatskanie. “He’s a caring, honest individual, and this whole thing is totally a shock and out of character for him.”

“There’s so many people here that love him,” said Ritchie’s wife, Kori, who attended high school in St. Helens with Harrison. “He’s a very stand-up guy. I would trust him with my life. I would trust him with my child’s life.”

But if Harrison has become addicted to opiate painkillers, as court documents allege, “it speaks eloquently of the insidiousness of the disease” of addiction, said the leader of an anti-drug coalition in Clatskanie.

“That it could take someone down of his caliber is frustrating and heartbreaking, and it really shows how anyone — anyone! — is susceptible,” said Robin Fouche, executive director of the Clatskanie Together Coalition.

“This isn’t who he was. This is just such a contrast to the officer we and Clatskanie knew.”

Oregon State Police arrested Harrison Aug. 4 and booked him into the Columbia County Jail on suspicion of two counts of first-degree burglary, second-degree theft and official misconduct allegedly taking place in April and July. He posted $18,625 bond and was released from jail that evening.

His arraignment is set for 10:30 a.m. Monday in Columbia County Circuit Court in St. Helens.

The 34-year-old officer, who resigned shortly before his arrest, joined the Clatskanie force nine years ago. Since February 2007, he served as the handler for K9 Ike, a cross-trained drug-sniffing and tracking dog. (Clatskanie Police Chief Marvin Hoover has said the department will train another officer to be Ike’s handler.)

Clatskanie Together Coalition bought Ike for the police department after coalition members learned that Harrison was willing to mortgage his own home to buy the dog and pay for his own training as the handler, Fouche said.

She said Harrison also started the Clatskanie Citizens Police Academy, which operated in 2007-08, and created the curriculum. The free classes, which offered an in-depth look into workings of the police department, “built a lot of community understanding in what it is our police officers do,” she said.

He also taught self-defense courses and was a volunteer board member for Clatskanie Parks and Recreation, she added. “He was so committed to the community.”

“He was an awesome cop, but he didn’t have ‘supercop’ about him,” Kori Ritchie said. “He did his job and he did it great.”

Harrison had an easy rapport with young people, who reacted to his arrest in ways that surprised her, Fouche said.

“I haven’t seen the anger from the kids, the ‘you betrayed me’ kind of thing that I’m hearing adults say that kids should be feeling,” Fouche said. “What I’m hearing instead is more of the sadness, like, ‘He’s gone now. He’s my favorite cop.’ ”

At a recent Coalition gathering of 12- to 15-year-olds, the kids discussed the arrest from their perspective.

“They were saying, ‘Grown-ups think when they’re messing up and making bad choices, that we don’t know what they’re doing — and we do know,’ ” she said.

Their feeling was that when an adult is caught doing wrong and there are repercussions, it proves that life is fair because the same rules apply to kids and grown-ups, she said.

“I wasn’t expecting that.”