Another Side of the Law : Youth programs: Boys learn that police officers are more than authority figures when they spend a weekend camping near Big Bear.

Anthony Valdez was 5 or 6 when a group of police officers looking for a drug dealer burst into the house of a friend where he and his father were staying overnight.

Valdez awoke to find several officers aiming their weapons at him and barking instructions to put his hands in the air.

“I got under the blanket and I was crying and calling for my dad,” the 11-year-old quietly recalled. “I was scared.”

Last weekend, though, Valdez saw police in a different light while spending a long weekend at a camp near Big Bear with a group of officers from the Alhambra Police Department.

After four days of playing games, swimming and hiking with the officers in the San Bernardino Mountains, Valdez concluded, “They’re fun to play with.”

That reaction was just what Alhambra Police Department officials hoped to elicit when they took 27 Alhambra boys to the YMCA’s Camp Ta Ta Pochen near Jenks Lake.

The department’s annual DARE Camp, which began four years ago, is designed to show boys that police officers are human, “not just a figure of authority,” said Officer Gary LaGuard, who runs the department’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education program.

That way, if the boys later have problems that they can’t share with friends or family, they may turn to the officers for help.

“We want to show these kids that the police officer is their friend that they can trust, not just a bad guy,” said Susie Carranza, a therapist who works with children for the Alhambra Police Department. “They are not alone. There is a support system they can turn to for help with their problem.”

The weekend in the mountains also is designed to show the boys the beauty of the natural world, which officers hope will deter the children from eventually turning to drugs for recreation.

“We wanted to give the kids a positive alternative,” said Officer Debbie Santana, who developed the camp program, which pays city employees their regular daily rate for the 24-hour duty.

Six officers, three civilian police employees and two Alhambra Fire Department paramedics attended this year.

The children were from the Alhambra City Elementary School District and local Catholic schools. School officials and police select those they believe will benefit from a weekend outdoors with positive role models, LaGuard said.

Many of kids come from broken homes. Others have family members who have had run-ins with authorities. Some hang around the fringes of gangs. Most are considered susceptible to experimenting with drugs.

The campers are asked to pay $20 for the four days. In addition to the employee salaries, the city of Alhambra pays $1,500 of the total cost of $2,800 for DARE camp. The rest comes from donations by community organizations such as the Rotary Club, the Alhambra Women’s Club and the Lion’s Club.

For several of this year’s participants, the weekend trip was one of their first experiences out of the city into nature. Some had spent their summers watching television and playing Nintendo every day.

“A lot of the kids come up to you and give you a hug and say, ‘Thank you for doing this,’ ” Officer Jennifer Weise said.

One boy said that before coming to camp, he hated police because officers had once roughed up his father. On Monday, though, the boy frolicked in the lake and rowed a canoe with officers who he called by their first names.

“I guess they’re not all bad,” he said.

Weise, who was also a counselor at DARE Camp last year, said that she frequently runs into children that she met at camp. When she sees them on the streets, she said she always stops to see how they are doing.

“You run into them and they feel like they can confide in you and tell you the truth,” she said.

Each night at camp concluded around a campfire, during which officers talked to the children about such topics as self-esteem and the use of drugs. Often, the discussions continued in the cabins after the campfire was out.

One night, Weise said, one boy in her cabin told his companions that his father was a heroin addict in prison. The boy cried as he talked about how his father stole and committed other crimes to get money for his habit.

Afterward, Weise said, “I told him, ‘If you ever need anything, give me a call.’ ”

Julian Cummings, an 11-year-old with a bright grin, said that his weekend at camp with the officers had changed his impression of police.

“I thought they were mean and just ate doughnuts all day,” he said. “But they were nicer here. They did everything we wanted to do.”