Tom Hoepner worked two summers as a cook at Red’s Eats, started his civilian police career at Wiscasset Police Department, and is the father of a Wiscasset High School graduate.

Now the New Haven, Connecticut-raised Damariscotta resident is back on the Wiscasset police force, this time working in the town’s two schools.

Hoepner started work in the schools Sept. 8, as the town’s second school resource officer. He follows Perry Hatch, who resigned over the summer.

Hoepner said he will be working as Hatch did, getting to know students and helping them to see that an officer in uniform is someone they can trust and talk to.

“The idea is to get kids used to seeing you in other lights than stopping them on the side of the road. So it turns out to be a good, positive thing,” Hoepner, 53, said in his office at Wiscasset Middle High School on Sept. 16.

Several staff members have recognized his name from when son Daniel Hoepner was their student, he said. Daniel Hoepner graduated from Wiscasset High School and is now a Manhattan, New York City, accountant. His brother, Lincoln Academy graduate Josh Hoepner is a University of Maine at Orono junior studying education.

Their father joined the Navy at 18 and stayed in eight years, serving first as a baker then switching to law enforcement at the five-year mark.

The time he spent stationed at Naval Air Station Brunswick led him to decide that Maine was one of the better places to live, so he made it his home, he said.

Hoepner expects to spend most of each work week at Wiscasset Middle High and the rest at Wiscasset Elementary School. When there’s no school, he’ll be out patrolling.

Working in Wiscasset again is coming full circle, he said.

He knows most of the streets already, and some of the people he meets. Much has changed at the police department where he got his start 25 years ago. The force is smaller, with all different members than those he worked with for three years there.

While on the force, Hoepner also served on the Wiscasset Fire Department. He is now a captain on the Damariscotta Fire Department.

Asked what it is about public safety that appeals to him, he said: “I like interacting with people, helping people.”

Tom Hoepner has previously been a resource officer at Lincoln Academy, Medomak Valley High School in Waldoboro and Great Salt Bay School in Damariscotta.

To take the Wiscasset resource officer job, he left a state position as a deputy judicial marshal at West Bath District Court.

“I was Bull from ‘Night Court.’ It was a pretty good job, but then this one came along and it’s what I like to do.”

Hoepner’s past work in schools included teaching the Drug Awareness Resistance Education (DARE) program. He would like to bring it back to Wiscasset, possibly starting with fifth graders as early as this year.

“When you come in as an SRO, it’s a work in progress,” he said about the job. “So you just try to deal with things as they come, and work toward making it a better program. That’s my plan.”