The repo man has braved gunfire, faced down hulking Harley riders and calmed farmers who threatened to throw him into a manure spreader.

Occasionally Harry Serena retreats empty-handed. But at 2:31 a.m. on a recent Monday, he pounces on his prey -- a 2003 blue Chevy Trailblazer, parked in a lot outside a South Park apartment complex.

Quietly, so as not to rouse the bankrupt woman inside, Mr. Serena backs his tow truck up against the front of the SUV to cradle the wheels, wedges open the door and releases the emergency brake, before flinging himself under the body of the car as nimbly as a mechanic at a NASCAR pit stop.

Two minutes later, he zooms off, the Trailblazer trapped on top of his truck.

"This is fun," he says giddily. "Where else can you get this adrenaline rush and get paid to do it?"

When the economy is in the dumps, the repo man is flying high.

A repo man is the cold slap of reality in our buy-now-pay-later society. And a growing number of people are getting into the act -- 177 licensed repossession companies in the state, up from 157 a year ago.

Mr. Serena, the top producer at American Recovery Corp. in McKeesport, isn't just snatching cars from the usual suspects -- the poor, the jobless, the bankrupt. He also is repossessing unlikely cars -- a Dodge pickup from a prominent professional ballplayer, a suburban mayor's car for the third time, a judge's Mercedes.

"It's arrogance," he says of well-off debtors. "They've got it coming."

The gravel-voiced 44-year-old loves to hunt down cars and boats that are hidden at relatives' houses, in church parking lots, behind Dumpsters. The thrill of the chase stokes him like a drug.

"I would never jump out of an airplane, but I will come take your car."

But it's hard work. Before you quit your predictable desk job for the closest thing to legalized stealing, be warned that the current credit crisis is making the chase harder. Some banks that used to give debtors two months to pay are extending the grace period by a few months, hoping they will get their money back.

So debtors have more lead time to hide their wheels.

Mr. Serena isn't daunted by sneaky debtors. Bring them on, he says.

The eight-year veteran of this high-burnout profession has snatched the cars of two cousins. He has repossessed the cars of a fellow repo man in his office. He has dressed up as the Grinch to seize cars on Christmas Day.

"If it's gettable, I will get it."

At 3:25 a.m. on a recent morning, the "it" he is chasing is a Chevrolet Tahoe in the darkened streets of Duquesne. A neighbor told him the woman had stopped driving the car three weeks ago.

Usually, it's business, not personal. The bank orders the repossession. He carries it out.

But in this case, it's personal. Mr. Serena, who couldn't find the car, saw the debtor at her house and asked her about it.

"She lied," he says. "She said she was her sister baby-sitting. The neighbor told me it was her. She slammed the door and swore up a storm.

"She has an attitude," he says. "I am going to run her four or five times a day. When I get her, it is going to feel good."

By law, he is allowed to talk to neighbors, just as long as he doesn't tell them he is a repo man. So he lies. He calls a neighbor and tells them he is getting married or coming home from the war and needs to get in touch with his old friend Joe or Sue.

People in affluent neighborhoods don't give him much, but those in working class and poor neighborhoods often rat each other out, he says. They figure out he is the repo man. Some set up lawn chairs to watch the spectacle of a neighbor losing a car.

The 5-foot, 8-inch, 215-pound man with curly brown hair and a T-shirt that reads "recovery agent" looks imposing, but he walks cat-like up deserted streets and down long driveways. He is allowed on people's property, but cannot barge into their garages or houses. He parks his truck four blocks from a house to find the car on foot, checking the vehicle ID number on the windshield, before circling back in his truck.

Usually he works stealthily. After snatching the SUV in South Park, he snags a Suzuki Sidekick in Plum and an Oldsmobile in East Liberty, two more cars that will likely be sold at auction. The cars are the bank's property now, but sometimes people get them back after calling their bank and negotiating a payment schedule.

The two cars take only 10 seconds each to remove. He doesn't even have to get out of his remote-controlled truck to repossess them because they are parked in the right direction. The job in South Park was more complicated because the rear-wheel-drive car abutted a hillside and he was unable to get behind the wheels. So he jimmied the lock, released the emergency brake and crawled underneath to put the car in neutral.

He earns $230 for the three cars, a slow 10-hour shift. On a better night, he might snag five cars. At that pace, he makes about $5,000 a month.

He earns every cent when he's caught taking a car in the middle of the night.

Naked women have come running after him, begging him to give their car back. Others have offered sex. (The cars still go). A tattooed Harley owner told him, "I will give you my first born before I give you my Harley."

Despite his glee in catching some debtors, he sympathizes with some others, such as the widow who lost two cars because she had to pay for home heating oil. He feels for the husband who has lost his job and cries when his car is taken away.

"Those are the ones you feel sorry for because they intended to pay."

He has no sympathy for the "deadbeats," people who use various Social Security numbers and aliases and have never made a payment and then abuse him.

"They think it's their car," he says. "The bank warned them with letters and phone calls. Why should everyone else pay higher interest rates?"

Some people take their frustration out on their cars, slashing the leather seats, keying the exterior, smashing the windows before he gets there. Others take their frustration out on Mr. Serena.

A man in McClellandtown, Fayette County, pointed a shotgun out the window and took two shots at him. Drunk, the man missed.

A man in Irwin jumped into the Toyota on his tow truck while his wife held him at gunpoint.

Another man chased him with a sword.

A man in an affluent suburb chased him with a baseball bat after revealing that he had lost his job and his wife and kids had left him. "I have nothing to live for," the man screamed, waving the bat.

Given the animosity he engenders, Mr. Serena doesn't tell most people what he does for a living.

He doesn't carry a gun. American Recovery doesn't permit it, and he's glad he is unarmed.

"I probably would have used it."

He has never hit anyone either, another job no-no.

His boss, Pete Miller, says the mistake many new repo men make is thinking that they are going to knock the door down and rough people up in the way the job is portrayed on the reality TV series "Repo Man." These employees don't last long.

"A lot of the younger people think they are going to hold people at gunpoint. They come in with stars in their eyes and think they are going to be a movie star," Mr. Miller says. "But it is a lot of hard work."

Mr. Serena has learned how to hold himself back in the face of crazy anger.

"If you touch someone, you are going to jail."

Being around all this financial ruin has made him a little cautious of spending. Mr. Serena drives a Chevrolet Cavalier, all paid off.

The former mechanic and restaurateur is eyeing a new Camaro. But he isn't sure if he wants to splurge. He has seen what expensive cars can do to people.

If he ever got behind on his payments, he would just call the bank and say, "Come pick it up."

The repo man would never want to suffer the humiliation of encountering another repo man.