Simi Priest Investigated After Cash Is Found : Archdiocese: Father David Piroli disappears after his arrest on drug charges, which were dropped. Small bills totaling $55,000 were discovered in his car and apartment.

A Simi Valley priest is being investigated by police and church officials after police in Hollywood arrested him with cocaine and $10,000 cash in his parish-owned car, and a further search found $45,000 cash in his church apartment.

Drug charges against Father David Piroli were dropped, but the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles is auditing St. Peter Claver Church to learn whether the $55,000 in small bills came from church funds, Auxiliary Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann said Monday.

And Simi Valley police said they are awaiting the results of the church audit to decide whether to file theft charges against Piroli, who disappeared a few days after his release from custody.

Piroli’s May 29 arrest and his subsequent disappearance have stunned the parish of St. Peter Claver, where he was the popular assistant pastor for two years, Ziemann said.

“We are certainly very concerned for him,” said Ziemann, who oversees the archdiocese’s churches in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. “We want to help him in whatever way possible. And we’re also very concerned for the parish.”

“It came as a shock to us,” said Father James McKeon, the church’s pastor. Piroli, 36, was “well liked by the people and missed very much,” McKeon said.

Several members of the church’s parish council Monday declined to discuss Piroli’s arrest or the reaction of the parish. Other council members could not be reached for comment.

Piroli said Mass four or five times a week. He baptized babies on Sunday afternoons, heard two hours of parishioners’ confessions on Saturdays and led prayer meetings on Wednesday nights for the church’s youth ministry, McKeon said.

And he never hinted that he had troubles, McKeon said.

“It’s been a stunning effect, totally unexpected,” McKeon said. “The bishop’s concerned about the welfare of the people, how they’re going to work this out. It’s quite a blow.”

On May 29, officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division arrested Piroli outside the Sears, Roebuck store in Hollywood, Ziemann said.

Employees there, nervous after looting hit the store during the Los Angeles riots, reported a man loitering in a car near the entrance, he said.

Police arrived and searched Piroli’s car, finding a small amount of rock and powder cocaine scattered throughout the vehicle, said Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Norman Shapiro. A young man was with Piroli at the time of the arrest, but was not held, Shapiro said.

Shapiro said the amount of cocaine was not large enough to warrant pressing charges. The district attorney’s office dropped the drug case on June 24, two days before Piroli was to be arraigned.

But police also had seized about $10,000 in small bills stuffed in boxes and paper bags in several places in the car, money they later released to the archdiocese.

“We have to determine whether that belongs to the parish or whether that’s his personal money,” Ziemann said.

Soon after Piroli’s arrest, church employees searched his rooms at St. Peter Claver, Ziemann said.

There they found $45,000 in small bills wrapped in an assortment of paper bags and small boxes, Ziemann added.

The bishop said he allowed staff to remove the money, which the Ventura County district attorney’s office later seized. The church has filed a claim with the county to get the money back, Ziemann said, adding, “Until we get his story, we’re not designating it for anything just yet.”

McKeon posted Piroli’s $5,000 bail and drove him back to the assistant pastor’s small suite at St. Peter Claver’s rectory, where Piroli stayed for several days, Ziemann said.

On June 3, Piroli left in the same white 1990 Chevrolet Lumina that he had been arrested in, saying he needed “wheels to get where he was going” and promising to return it, McKeon said.

But Piroli never returned.

After a few weeks, church employees stripped his walls of the few religious pictures and books that they found there and put them in boxes to make way for a replacement priest expected to be named in the next few weeks, McKeon said.

The church filed a missing-vehicle report with Simi Valley police, who recovered the car from the parking lot of a Burbank medical facility two weeks after his disappearance, McKeon said.

Ziemann said the church is waiting to hear from Piroli before it can determine what to do about the money.

Soon after his disappearance, Piroli made one call to the parish from Guadalajara, Mexico, but church officials believe that he is somewhere in Southern California now, Ziemann said.

“We believe it could very well be church money,” Ziemann said. “We can’t make that assertion until we know where he is. . . . We want to hear his side of the story.”

Times staff writer Phil Sneiderman contributed to this report.