HUNTINGTON BEACH – They called ahead, as any good patient would, to make sure their drug was in stock and ready for pickup.

Just after 3 a.m. on Jan. 17, two men strolled through the doors of the CVS pharmacy on Beach Boulevard. They brought a gun instead of prescription – and a note demanding OxyContin, a highly addictive prescription painkiller, police said.

The pharmacist didn’t argue – and handed over hundreds of tablets of “hillbilly heroin.” The robbers left without firing a shot.

East Coast heroin and methamphetamine addicts started the trend – shaking down pharmacies for OxyContin for a quick, cheap fix. The robbery wave that has slowly washed across the country for the past five years is now hitting local drug stores. At least eight Orange County pharmacies have been robbed since December by men demanding the drug, officials said.

Three different Costa Mesa Rite Aids have been hit in the past three weeks. Two Huntington Beach CVS stores – across Harbor Boulevard from each other – were robbed. A Mariners Pharmacy in Newport Beach. A Rite Aid in Orange. In Lake Forest, a man stole more than $10,000 worth of OxyContin and Vicodin from a pharmacy Feb. 11 – all caught on tape.

The rise of the 24-hour pharmacy catering to busy families coupled with a lack of supply of the addictive drug by street dealers is luring addicts to corner drugstores, police said.

“A lot of these people are burglars by trade,” said Newport Beach police Sgt. Evan Sailor. “It seems to be a lot quicker to go into a pharmacy than to break in a house and hope they find what they’re looking for. Here they can go in, get what they want from the pharmacist and pop a couple of pills in their car.”

Stores crammed with shoppers and clerks during the day become lonely places at night, with skeleton crews and security guards to manage moms with sick children and partiers with the munchies. Now they are faced with armed robbers with a taste for OxyContin.

Thieves with notes and guns aren’t just sticking to nighttime heists. They are also marching into crowded pharmacies midmorning and right before closing and demanding the drugs, police said. Most customers never even know there has been a hold-up.

Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach detectives think their recent rash of robberies are being carried out by the same men – and are hoping surveillance pictures will help nab them.

Crushed up and injected or swallowed to get the biggest rush, OxyContin – an opiate – has an intense mellowing effect similar to morphine. Combined with methamphetamine to create a “speedball,” OxyContin helps users avoid the sudden, painful crash when the methamphetamine high wears off, experts said.

“When you take it in conjunction with other stuff, the high you get isn’t one plus one equals two,” Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Davis said. “It’s one plus one equals six. If you don’t know what you’re doing that can get really dangerous really quick.”

At least nine armed OxyContin robberies and 13 break-ins were reported statewide last year.

With a street value of $25 to $35 a pill, thieves can turn a huge profit with little effort, Huntington Beach police Detective Jim Allard said. More than 15,000 tablets were reported stolen from California pharmacies last year alone.

“It’s a troubling trend,” said Virginia Herold, executive officer of the California Board of Pharmacies.

Some pharmacies are ordering less OxyContin or have stopped selling it completely, forcing patients to go elsewhere or order by mail. Others are bulking up security and are locking OxyContin in safes.

“Our priority is to continue to serve our patients and to take care of their needs,” said Karen Ramos, a spokeswoman for CVS Pharmacy.

Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, is putting up thousands of dollars in reward money for information leading to the capture of the thieves and is creating a nationwide tracking system to catalogue the robberies. Doctors who prescribe the drug are warned about its addictiveness. Patients are warned about the theft risk – and to keep it out of the hands of drug addicts.

“People need drugs because they are sick,” Costa Mesa police Sgt. Mike Ginther said. “Pharmacies are there to help people. They aren’t going to go away, but there really isn’t too much they can do to stop this.”

Contact the writer: 714-445-6682 or kedds@ocregister.com