Joseph Quinichett Davis Jr., 60, Magee Rehabilitation Hospital aide.

JOE DAVIS picked himself up out of the gutter of drug addiction and went on to a life devoted to helping others climb out of the same gutter.

In his early days, it didn't seem that things could have gotten much worse for Joe. He was a drug addict for 20 years, then was shot in the spine and rendered a paraplegic.

Nothing was going right for him. He wasn't even able to kill himself successfully.

Actually, it was his attempted suicide in the mid-1980s, when he swallowed 300 pills and put himself in a four-day coma, that turned his life around.

When he came out of the coma, he had a spiritual revelation. He decided he didn't want to live the forlorn, useless existence of a paralyzed drug addict.

He never took another drug.

Joseph Quinichett Davis Jr., a mentor at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, a devoted family man and generous friend, died Aug. 15. He was 60 and lived in West Oak Lane.

At Magee, Joe was coordinator of the Think First program, a violence and injury-prevention program aimed at showing young people ways in which they could avoid both brain and spinal cord injuries.

Think first: "Use your mind to protect your body," were the watchwords.

Joe would go to schools, recreation centers, any place where young people gathered to share his story, hoping that at least one child would hear him and avoid the life of disability that Joe ultimately lived for 34 years.

He would say, "I would meet a kid in a phone booth if it meant saving him from harm."

Joe was born in Rocky Mount, N.C., to Joseph Q. Davis Sr. and Almedia Davis. After he dropped out of school in the 10th grade, his life started on its downward spiral. He gave himself over to drugs.

"If there was something that would take me out of where I was, I used it," he told the Daily News in 1996.

In the early '80s, he was shot in the back and paralyzed. "Some kid shot me," he once said, "for reasons that are still unknown to me."

After his awakening, Joe went back to school, earned his high school diploma, and went on to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a master's degree in social work.

"Joe had a huge heart full of love," his family said. "But his greatest love was reserved for his family, including his wife, father, sisters, nieces and nephews. Joe took his position within the family as the oldest child quite seriously, and he never failed to tell his family how much he loved them on a daily basis."

His wife, Terri, said Joe had a smile that "lit up any room." She said his smile could still melt her heart, just as it did when they first met 26 years ago.

Joe was known for his sartorial splendor. He made sure his clothing matched perfectly from head to toe. He was never without a hat that also matched.

"While Joe loved having money, which enabled him to buy his clothing, he would just as easily give money away to anyone he felt was in need," his family said.

"To call Joe generous would be an understatement. Joe took very few things in life seriously, including himself.

"Joe's character was beyond reproach, and with all of the great work he was doing it would have been very easy for everything to go to Joe's head. But it never did. Joe remained a very humble man."

Joe had a philosophical outlook on life that could be summed up by his favorite saying: "Life is for the living, live large.

"And if you have the chance to sit it out or dance," he would say, "I hope you dance."

Besides his wife, he is survived by his father, and three sisters, Veronica Gail, Valerie and Vanessa.

Services: 10 a.m. Saturday at Berean Baptist Church, 2425 N. Indiana Ave. Friends may call at 6 p.m. tomorrow at the Bruce R. Hawkins Funeral Home, 6828 Old York Road, and at 8 a.m. Saturday at the church. Burial will be at Ivy Hill Cemetery.