The next call comes at 8:15 p.m. from a man at Farren's Pub & Eatery in downtown Champaign. Greg Borchelt maneuvers his Yellow Checker cab through the streets past changing streetlights and stop signs and pulls into an alley past the pub. He jumps out of his cab, finds his customer in a flash and is on his way.

"You headed home?" Greg asks the man.

"Yeah, I wanna stop at Pic on the way," the man says, meaning a Picadilly Liquor Store. "They must only have a few of you running tonight."

"No, there is about five or six of us tonight."

At 46 years old, Fuzzy — Greg's nickname to many because of his thick silver hair and matching full, bushy beard — drives the cab through the dark neighborhood streets filled with fallen leaves and dimly glowing street lamps. He says he could do many jobs — work construction, even management. But he likes the freedom of driving a cab.

"I don't have someone looking over my shoulder all the time like you do at other jobs," he says.

The 60-hour workweeks can be grueling and the work can be dangerous, as Fuzzy will be reminded in the near future. But Fuzzy says he makes about the same amount of money he could at any other job he would do. He has to pay for gas, but he earns 50 percent of his total fares for the night plus tips. For Fuzzy this could be $100 on a slow night and twice that on a busy night. Fuzzy can usually make more than most drivers because he has regular customers. They do not have to mess around with calling the company and being put on the waiting list for a cab. Instead, they can get right through to their dependable driver.

"I have a lot of girls on campus I can give a safe ride home to," he says.

Back in the cab, Fuzzy's customer sparks up a conversation.

"Looked like a possum running across the road," the man says.

"More like a coon to me," Fuzzy says.

The cab pops out to a main road and heads toward Picadilly. Fuzzy parks the cab in a front row spot while the man runs in, makes his purchase and gets back in the cab.

"What are you gonna be for Halloween?" Fuzzy asks.

"I was thinking a fat Dracula," he says. "I have the fat part down."

"It's my oldest boy's birthday on Halloween," Fuzzy says. "He'll be 14."

"He's getting ready for all that antiauthority stuff."

"No, he's not really like that, but his brother is."

Fuzzy has two sons — Cody, and Cole, 7. He and wife Angela have been married for 17 years and have lived in their own home for about 14 years. Although he works odd hours, he sees his family a lot. Fuzzy sees his boys before they go to school and for a couple of hours after school before he heads off to work. On Mondays, Fuzzy is a committeeman for his youngest son's Boy Scout troop. He was a Boy Scout himself as a kid.

"That'll be $12.50," Fuzzy says when they arrive at the man's house.

"All right, have a good night," the man says.

"Seventy-eight," Fuzzy says softly into the radio to get the dispatcher's attention.

"Seventy-eight," the dispatcher says.

"Clear for $12.50," Fuzzy says giving the amount of the ride's fare.

When Fuzzy was younger, he would take trips to Florida to pick up marijuana to sell when he got back to Illinois. One time he sold a bail — 2 pounds of marijuana — to a man who ended up getting caught with the drugs and ratting on Fuzzy. After consulting an attorney, he thought it would be best to join the Navy for four years rather than risk jail time, something courts sometimes allowed in those days.

Once out of the Navy, he began working as an airport limousine driver before his brother suggested he start driving a cab. Fuzzy has been driving cabs ever since. He drives his cab from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday and claims to hold the local Yellow Checker record for being fired and rehired the most times — nine. He has driven people as far as Nashville and St. Louis. In his younger days, a man hired him to drive him to Nashville for a week at $1,000 a day to deliver a mysterious suitcase.

"I would never do that today," Fuzzy says. "But I was young."

He describes himself as an "old hippie." When Fuzzy graduated from high school, he took off in his old Chevy toward the West Coast. He stopped in Denver, Phoenix, Reno — cities where he would sign up with the local painter's union and work for a while before moving on to the next place.

Fuzzy is a fairly tall man, although you can't usually tell since he is always sitting down. He wears jeans on the job and sometimes a baseball hat or sunglasses. Fuzzy drives with his chair fully erect and always wears his seat belt. He smokes cigarettes pretty much nonstop. He always wears a light jacket and has to have a Mountain Dew.

"It keeps me awake and it's better than coffee," he says. "Coffee goes right through you and I don't have time to stop."

In his many years of driving a cab, Fuzzy has been robbed twice. One of the robberies took place at gunpoint. It happened in north Champaign. A man jumped in the front seat of his cab and before Fuzzy could ask where he was going, the man had a gun to Fuzzy's head. Fuzzy gave him his cash and the man bolted.

"I called the cops and went home and got drunk," Fuzzy says.

The second robbery was by a man and a woman. A week later, Fuzzy was called to pick up a woman who just happened to be the one who helped rob him. He locked the cab doors so she could not get out and drove straight to the police station. The woman was let go after she gave up the man involved in the robbery, Fuzzy says.

Sometime later, Fuzzy was watching TV before work and saw a Crime Stoppers' ad featuring the woman. She and her brother had robbed someone else. Soon after, Fuzzy was called to pick up a customer at a house in Urbana — and it was the same woman. He stopped, called the police and turned the woman in yet again — and collected a $50 Crime Stoppers' reward.

Fuzzy takes a sip of Mountain Dew and lights a cigarette.

"I told myself I'd quit smoking when cigarettes reached a dollar," he says.

The time is 8:51 p.m.

Fuzzy was raised in Champaign-Urbana and knows every street and every address. He knows where he will drive to, and where he won't.

"If they don't come out the front door, I keep driving. You recognize the known drug dealers, and you get to know the drug houses to avoid.

"Seventy-eight," Fuzzy says into the radio.

"Seventy-eight," the dispatcher says.

"Clear," Fuzzy says.

An exchange between a lost driver and the dispatcher hums through the radio.

"Cab driving isn't how it used to be," Fuzzy says. "It used to be pretty wild back in the '80s. We used to run call girls in the cab. Guys would get in asking where they could find a girl, and we would just happen to know where one was. We would get a kickback from the girl and the guy who wanted her." He shakes his head.

Back when Burnham Hospital in Champaign still existed, the hospital had a service for people too drunk to drive. People could call the hospital and request a cab. The hospital would then call Yellow Checker and pay the person's fare. On slow nights, some drivers would call the service from a pay phone posing as a drunken student. Their cab would be called and they would have a half-hour of free time and pick up the fare for their nonexistent customer.

"It's not the same," he says.

At 9:05 p.m., the dispatcher calls for Fuzzy to pick up a man back at the County Fair apartments. The man climbs in and Fuzzy takes off for his destination.

"You know, in Chicago the meter keeps running when you're stopped," the man says. "(Fuzzy's) stops when you stop."

"I can have it keep going if you want," Fuzzy says.

"Naw, man," the man laughs.

Fuzzy is almost halfway through his shift. He lights up another cigarette as he drops the man at a house in Urbana.

"Seventy-eight," Fuzzy says on the radio.

"Seventy-eight," the dispatcher says.

"Clear," Fuzzy says, and he heads back toward Campustown.

The pavement runs by in a steady stream and the night is busy with one call after another. Two college girls headed for Sterling Apartments in Savoy, a woman on her way to work at the Kraft factory, a family going off to a wedding, a young couple excited to attend the Alan Jackson concert — Fuzzy has seen it all.

He takes a sip of Mountain Dew.

"I had two people throw up in the cab on Friday," he says. "I charged them around $20-25 for the detail job. I have to clean it out before I make my next run."

A fraternity on campus has had a party tonight at Station 211, a campus bar, and its drunken patrons have kept Yellow Checker and Fuzzy busy. At 1:37 a.m., Fuzzy drives toward Station 211, dodging pedestrians on the campus streets.

"I hit a kid coming out of Zorba's one night on campus," Fuzzy says. "There were two guys and one pushed the other guy in front of my car. I didn't have time to take my foot off the gas. When the police came the kid got a jaywalking ticket and disorderly conduct because he tried to beat my ass, but his legs were broken."

Three guys climb into the cab outside the Station party and sputter off the fraternity's address. They go about their own conversation talking about girls they met that night.

"Let's order a pizza," says one guy, as Fuzzy pulls up to their stop.

"Six bucks even," he says.

Fuzzy has a cooler of samples to pick up at a Carle Hospital branch in Savoy and deliver to the main hospital in Urbana later in the night. He parks beneath the building's awning, punches the door code, disappears inside, and returns with the cooler.

"Seventy-eight," the dispatcher says.

"Seventy-eight," Fuzzy responds.

"The bartender at Tumble Inn called for a cab to pick up five girls."

"Copy that," Fuzzy says.

The college girls stumble out of the Tumble Inn and pile into the cab. They give the address for a house on campus and begin yelling and laughing and talking. Fuzzy takes a sip of his Mountain Dew and quietly drives to their house.

At 2:17 a.m., he picks up his night's last fare, a guy and a girl at the Station party headed for the fraternity house. They sit in the back whispering sweet nothings. At 2:32 a.m. Fuzzy pulls up to the fraternity. He rattles off the fare and the couple pays. He calls the dispatcher to record the sale and drives toward Carle to drop off the cooler.

The night ends routinely for Fuzzy, but not every night is routine. A few nights later Fuzzy was attacked for the first time since 1996. The night was typical with one fare after another when Fuzzy was called to Kam's, a well-known campus bar. He was the first to say he didn't expect to be attacked after he picked up the young men at Kam's. He drove them to the Atrium Apartments in Urbana on South Lincoln Avenue. Two of the men got out of the cab so Fuzzy assumed the third man was paying. Before he knew it, he was knocked on the side of his face by a club of some sort.

"I've been hit before, but never that hard," he says. "I actually saw stars." The stars lasted just long enough for the man to run away. Fuzzy was left with all of his money, but also with a broken jaw. He was also out the $8 cab fare the man apparently hit him to avoid paying.

Fuzzy went to the hospital the next morning and, after two shots of morphine, gave police his statement.

"I don't really even remember what I told them," he says. "I had so much morphine by that time."

Fuzzy spent the next week taking Vicodin pills and lying on the couch. He underwent surgery to pop his bones back into place and got stitches to close the cut above his ear, and went back to work, his face still swollen and the pain still steady. Fuzzy went back to his job because it is just that, his job. He says if he ever was permanently injured that day would be when the day he'd quit, but not this time.

"I got too bored sitting on the couch and being lazy all day," he says. Fuzzy is not confident police will find his attacker, so he has taken his own steps to ensure justice will be served. "I have a good network in this town," he says. "I'll find him."