DRUGS CLAIM LIFE OF TRAGIC DANA PLATO; IT WAS ALL DOWNHILL AFTER SHE LEFT SHOW

Dana Plato, troubled star of the 1970s sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes,” died of a drug overdose – just a day after insisting in her last interview she was clean and sober.

Plato, 34, died Saturday night at the Oklahoma home of her fiance’s parents after taking Valium and the painkiller Loritab.

“The death appears to be an accidental overdose. We don’t suspect suicide,” Moore, Okla., police Sgt. Scott Singer said yesterday.

On Friday, the actress was in New York for an interview with shock jock Howard Stern – denying reports she was hooked on drugs.

“I have been sober for the longest time. Oh, it’s over a decade now. No joke,” Plato said on the morning radio show, her last interview before her death.

Stern told her: “You look fine to me.”

But a series of callers accused Plato of hiding an ongoing drug habit.

One caller mercilessly taunted Plato as an “ex-druggie, ex-con lesbian with mental-health problems.”

A defiant Plato offered to take a drug test several times. Stern pulled out a sample of her hair – but backed off when his staff found out results from a drugstore test weren’t immediate.

“I’m tired of defending my character. I am what I am. What you see is what you get,” said Plato.

“My life is so good now. I’ve never been happier.”

Plato played rich girl Kimberly Drummond on the popular sitcom about a white New York millionaire who adopts two black brothers.

The series ran on NBC from 1978 to 1984, when Plato left after getting pregnant. It ran two more years on ABC without her.

Plato said a woman who recently called Stern – claiming to be the actress’ lesbian lover and saying Plato was a drug addict – was a liar.

The woman, who was Plato’s roommate, also had been interviewed by the National Enquirer, which reported Plato was missing and on a drug binge.

“Have you become a full blown-out lesbian?” Stern asked.

“Well, heck, no. No, no, no. This was just a good fiend of mine. It’s a total misunderstanding,” Plato said.

Plato cried twice on Stern’s show, when two sympathetic callers wished her luck.

After the interview, Plato and Robert Menchaca, her fiance and manager, planned to head for Los Angeles – but stopped in Moore for a Mother’s Day visit with his family.

The town outside Oklahoma City was nearly flattened by the recent swarm of tornadoes.

Plato took a nap – and Menchaca became alarmed about 9:40 p.m. Saturday, when she did not wake up, Singer said.

Menchaca’s mother, a nurse, and his brother tried unsuccessfully to revive the actress with CPR.

Toxicology reports won’t be available for about six weeks, Singer said.

Plato – whose career hit the skids after “Diff’rent Strokes” – had struggled with a booze-and-drug habit that often landed her in trouble with the law.

She was arrested in 1991 for holding up a Las Vegas video store, and was slapped with five years’ probation. She later blamed the crime on alcoholism.

In 1992, Plato was caught forging prescriptions for nearly 1,000 Valium pills and spent a month in jail before Vegas superstar Wayne Newton bailed her out. She was hit with another five years’ probation.

Plato said at the time that she became hooked on the pills after a doctor prescribed them for “high anxiety.”

“Y’know, they really helped,” she told an interviewer in 1992. “They really, really, really did.”

A Playboy spread didn’t revive her career – and Plato’s acting roles were limited to low-budget flicks, such as 1992’s “Bikini Beach Race” and “Different Strokes: The Story of Jack and Jill … and Jill.”

Plato and Menchaca, 28, kept a low profile in the past year while living in Navarre, Fla., a suburb of Pensacola on the Gulf of Mexico.

“Dana said she was determined to get her life back on track and make a comeback in show business,” neighbor Val Hernandez told The Post.

“Dana kept saying how things were better now.”

On the Stern show, Plato said she was still acting but had no intention of ever returning to Los Angeles.

The actress had one son, 14-year-old Tyler, from an early marriage to Tulsa, Okla., club owner Lanny Lambert. Plato lost custody of Tyler when he was 5, but later won him back.

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