SAN FRANCISCO -- Flags at San Francisco City Hall will fly at half-staff on Friday in honor of Richard Hongisto, former sheriff, supervisor, assessor, police officer and police chief.

Hongisto died early this morning at his San Francisco home. He was 67 years old and had spent about half of his life in public service.

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Hongisto's friend Lee Houskeeper said Hongisto summoned the manager of his security business to his apartment around 3 a.m. because he was having chest pains. While Hongisto was gathering his belongings to be taken to the hospital, he collapsed of an apparent heart attack, Houskeeper said.

The San Francisco medical examiner's office reported this afternoon that a determination of Hongisto's cause of death is pending toxicology test results.

Longtime friend Barry Melton, now a Yolo County public defender, said today he met Hongisto in the late 1960s when Melton was the lead guitarist for Country Joe and the Fish.

His was one of the bands Hongisto brought in to perform in the San Francisco jail after he was elected sheriff in 1971, Melton said.

Melton remembered Hongisto as "the first sheriff in the United States running an incarceration facility who actually began serious rehabilitative programs to make people better off than when they came in."

He said Hongisto's vocational and other programs for inmates became models for jails nationwide.

Before he was sheriff, Hongisto had been a San Francisco police officer. He took his law enforcement experience to City Hall, where he served as a supervisor through most of the 1980s. He was then elected assessor in 1990.

Following his failed bid for the mayor's office, Hongisto's victorious opponent Frank Jordan appointed him police chief in 1992. His tenure was brief. Hongisto left after less than two months amid allegations that he had ordered officers to remove thousands of copies of the San Francisco Bay Times from news racks. The cover story, accompanied by an unflattering illustration of Hongisto, criticized his handling of demonstrations in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, which led to violent riots and looting in Los Angeles.

In recent years, Melton said, Hongisto had been running his company, Ambassador Security, and managing his real estate investments.

"This is just so unfair," Melton said. "He's really been enjoying this part of his life."

Melton described his friend as "a really warm, decent, generous -- and I mean generous to a fault -- guy. He was one of those guys with a welcome sign on him."

Melton said it was not uncommon for Hongisto to "call me up, verify that someone was not doing so well, and money would show up for them. That kind of stuff. Dick was there."

Hongisto is survived by a 21-year-old son, a 17-year-old daughter, a brother and many friends who will remember him at an informal gathering Friday at John's Grill in San Francisco, according to Houskeeper.