Ralph J. Young, SWAT team leader for the Pittsburgh FBI in the 1980s and '90s and founder of the federal fugitive task force, was known as polite, professional and soft-spoken.

But he was also no one to trifle with.

A cigar-chewing weight-lifter who sometimes tipped the scales at 250 pounds, he had arms like bridge cables and wore two of everything on tactical operations -- two firearms, two ball caps, two pairs of sunglasses, two gun belts, two sets of handcuffs.

"It was almost to the point where we had to lift him to get him into the SWAT van," said retired agent Larry Likar, his partner in the Pittsburgh office in the 1980s.

Mr. Young, a Pittsburgh native whose FBI career spanned the Atlanta child murders of the 1970s and a series of killings on St. Croix to more than 1,000 fugitive arrests here, died Friday of heart failure after a training session on a shooting range.

"That's the way he would have wanted to go," said John Vercelli, a deputy sheriff on the fugitive squad who learned his trade from Mr. Young.

He was 68 and lived in Wilkinsburg, where he had been working as a private investigator and firearms instructor since his retirement from the FBI in 1996.

Mr. Young, one of the relatively few black agents when he joined the bureau in the mid-1970s, was unusual in that he came to the FBI with seven years of experience as a Pittsburgh police officer and a detective on the robbery and homicide squads. He'd even been shot in the leg once.

At the FBI, he headed the bank robbery squad before taking over SWAT and starting the Greater Pittsburgh Fugitive Task Force in 1989, which since 9/11 has been run by the U.S. marshals so that FBI agents can concentrate on counter-terrorism.

As a teacher of tactics, his passion, Mr. Young was a gruff but endearing character.

"Ralph used to tell me, 'Sit down, shut your mouth and open your ears,'" said Mr. Vercelli, now the oldest member of the fugitive squad. "I attribute a lot of my success to Ralph."

Tough and burly, with an ever-present cigar hanging from his mouth (which he didn't smoke), Mr. Young had a commanding presence in his SWAT gear. Yet he was adept at defusing tense encounters and rarely had to resort to violence.

People he knew from the streets -- and he seemed to know everyone -- called him "Mr. Young."

"Ralph could turn a volatile situation into a church group," said Mr. Vercelli.

On one fugitive arrest on the North Side in the early 1990s, the mother and daughter of a suspect attacked Mr. Likar. As Mr. Young secured the building outside, the elderly mother kicked Mr. Likar in the groin while her daughter jumped on his back. The fight escalated.

"They were pulling my hair, they were kicking me," said Mr. Likar, who was reluctant to hit an old woman. "They were really starting to get some licks in."

When Mr. Young heard the commotion, he entered the fray but ended the battle with one sentence.

"Hey, you [expletive]," he said, "let go of that man."

They immediately complied.

"It was amazing," said Mr. Likar, now a professor at La Roche College. "He was able to achieve control by his physical presence."

Mr. Young's contacts throughout the region made him an effective investigator, but one of his best assets was his ability to keep his cool.

"He could handle himself [physically], but Ralph was a very even-tempered person," said Charles Moffatt, the superintendent of county police who attended the city police academy with Mr. Young in 1967. "He wasn't one that would jump into something that he didn't fully understand."

Mr. Young grew up in Homewood, the only child of a city police officer. After attending Westinghouse High School, he enlisted in the Army and served in the 82nd Airborne Division for three years in the early 1960s before earning a degree at the University of Pittsburgh.

While working as a homicide detective in the mid-1970s, he decided to take advantage of a program by the FBI to recruit more black agents.

He graduated from the FBI academy in Quantico, Va., in 1975 and went to work at his first post in a resident office outside Jackson, Miss. He was the first full-time black agent in that office, working in a region where the Ku Klux Klan was still active, but he worked well with local law enforcement and never reported any racial animus.

He also became friendly with a local football star at Jackson State University -- the great Walter Payton, who was drafted that year by the Chicago Bears.

From Mississippi, Mr. Young moved to the Washington, D.C., field office for three years until coming to Pittsburgh in the late 1970s. During his career here, Mr. Young was periodically assigned to special details for high-profile cases in other states, including the undercover infiltration of a black bank robbery gang in Cleveland.

"He rode with them for several weeks," recalled Mr. Likar. "It was very dangerous."

He also was part of a national FBI hostage negotiation team that responded to the takeover of a federal penitentiary in Atlanta by Cuban exiles in 1987.

Mr. Young was an old-school agent, however, and rarely discussed his job with his family. His ex-wife, Gloria, 66, of Tampa, said he would sometimes be gone for weeks on assignments. During the investigation of the kidnapping and killing of 28 children in Atlanta in the 1970s, for example, Mr. Young was away for three months but said little when he came back.

"That's what he lived, he lived being an FBI agent," his ex-wife said. "He lived the life. Everything he did was about work."

He left the bureau in 1996 and started a private investigation business, Ralph J. Young & Associates. He wasn't computer literate, so Mr. Likar's wife handled such tasks as background checks on individuals. At various ranges in the area, he also taught state constables how to shoot.

He was cleaning his weapon after a session Friday when he collapsed. He had a long-standing heart condition that he knew would kill him someday.

A week before he died, he'd told Mr. Likar that he'd done all he wanted to do in his life.

"I think he was ready," said Mr. Likar.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. today at Wesley Center AME Zion Church in the Hill District.