In the 1970s, parents sometimes came to Joseph A. Mosso Sr.'s pharmacy in Latrobe with a bag of something they found in their teen's possession and a lot of questions about street drugs.

He tested the unknown substances for free, and sometimes they were just aspirin or oregano, which at the time were being passed off as the real thing.

Sometimes, the stuff in the bag was the real thing.

If it was, he said: "I would tell the parents to sit down with their kids and talk. Young people just didn't know what they were using."

At times, he added, they still don't.

Mr. Mosso's work in drug abuse programming was only one of the community contributions cited Oct. 19, when he received the 2009 John W. Dargavel Medal, presented by the National Community Pharmacists Association.

He was recognized for his spirit of leadership and accomplishments, including serving as NCPA president and in other positions, and promoting a student outreach program to increase awareness of NCPA.

The award, sponsored by McKesson Corp., was presented at NCPA's 111th annual Convention and Trade Exposition in New Orleans.

Mr. Mosso, 77, retired from and sold Mosso's Pharmacy Inc. in 1996, after 40 years of business in the community where he lives.

He was known for professional innovations. Mosso's was the first local pharmacy to offer home delivery and 24-hour emergency service, and was the first in town to carry portable oxygen canisters -- which led to his son, Joseph Jr., founding Mosso Medical Supply.

"We were probably one of the first computerized pharmacies in the Latrobe area, and we were totally computerized in 1975 or 1976," the father said. "My first computer cost $40,000 and now you can buy one for $5,000 or less. Things have changed."

They've changed even more since the 1930s, when Mr. Mosso, as a youngster, visited his cousin, John Lee, a pharmacist in Petrolia, north of Butler. The customers, he noted, often paid with a slab of bacon, a dozen eggs or a gallon of milk.

"I was just mesmerized," he said. "They had a lot of respect for my cousin."

Mr. Mosso graduated from Duquesne University's School of Pharmacy and served with the Army Medical Corps in Korea, where he saw his first cases of hemorrhagic fever.

Back in Latrobe, he set up his pharmacy at a time when there were only a handful of antibiotics, and many of the drugs used today weren't even heard of. When the polio vaccine came out, he went to the gym at Saint Vincent College, in Unity, to help the late Dr. Walter Hazlett pass out sugar cubes that contained the doses.

Street drugs started coming into town in the 1960s and '70s.

"But the parents didn't believe there were drugs in our area," Mr. Mosso said. "They were coming to me and were extremely concerned about what the newspapers were telling them. They didn't understand marijuana, and they didn't understand LSD and heroin. But the kids were fascinated with it."

He began talking to groups of parents and young people, and he spoke to cadets at the Pennsylvania State Police Training Academy in Harrisburg.

In those early days, Mr. Mosso had drug-testing kits before the local and state police did, and was called to identify suspicious substances. Sometimes, he went on undercover operations and stayed in the distance to test the narcotics police brought back from the buy.

In the 1970s, Mr. Mosso founded the Committee on Drug Education in Latrobe, and in 1978 he worked with Dr. Robert Teeter and other community and education leaders to found the Saint Vincent College Prevention Projects.

That led him to presenting papers at the International Congress on Alcohol and Drug Addiction in Switzerland and Denmark. When he arrived in Copenhagen and told the cab driver the nature of his visit, the driver detoured to show him where addicts had taken over an abandoned Army barracks.

"They were squatters, and they offered me everything from marijuana to cocaine," Mr. Mosso said.

Because of his work in drug prevention, he received, among other recognitions, NCPA's Parke Davis Drug Abuse Education and Prevention Award, and the Pennsylvania Pharmaceutical Association Community Service Award.

He established the Joseph A. Mosso Sr. Scholarship Fund at his alma mater, and was the recipient of the College of Pharmacy's Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Hugh C. Muldoon Memorial Lecture Award and the Alpha Phi Delta Alumni, PSI Chapter Adam DiVincenzo Outstanding Citizen Award.

Mr. Mosso continues to do volunteer outreach through his church, St. John the Evangelist Parish in Latrobe.

"I was fortunate to be blessed with the clientele that I had," he said. "People have been wonderful to me and to my family."

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