A cabbie is fueled by a love.

By Mark C. Anderson

He jumps out and opens the door for each and every passenger. That’s not normal.

He wears a bushy white beard and a 1950s-era vinyl yellow-and-black Yellow Cab hat. Also not normal.

A maze of tattoos covers his forearms. He absolutely loves what he does for a living. And he oftentimes turns off his taximeter while stopped at a long light. Not normal, less normal...and normal has left the building.

Pacific Grove-based cab driver Robert Lee Sharp knows he strikes people as less than normal. He sees and hears it all the time.

“My customers get a little nervous until they hear me talk,” he says, blue eyes flashing beneath whitish-yellow eyebrows that match his beard. “Sometimes I forget I don’t look as sweet as I know I am.”

“They think I do drugs,” he says later. “I don’t.”

Still, some props help soften the initial impact. “At [Pacific Grove retirement home] Canterbury Woods I wear a stethoscope to put the sweet little old ladies at ease.” Somehow, it’s not too difficult to see the doctor gear going well with his black leather cowboy vest.

The 53-year-old Sharp says three decades of driving cabs—ever since he was the youngest cab driver Oakland Yellow Cab ever hired and had “patches on [his] pants and flowers in [his] hair”—has helped him “read” who needs a little soothing. “If you get in the taxi not smilin’, you’re not getting out until you smile,” he says. “Cab drivers are like psychiatrists.”

His psychotherapeutic toolkit includes some tried-and-true ways to crack passengers’ malaise. He says his car horn is a reliable technique (it goes “ohhh-uuuu-gah”). So is this pitch: “I have four styles of driving and I will drive however you choose—one: like a Tijuana taxi—on sidewalks, in yards, whatever; two: like an English chaffeur—it’s two years before they get their permits, they’re real gentlemen; three: like a New York cab; or four: like I normally do.”

Other humor comes in handy. With English and Australian passengers, he says, he offers “to drive on the other side of the road to make them feel at home.”

While driving past Robert Louis Stevenson in Pebble Beach at a serious clip, the cabbie raised on Tennessee mountain roads shouts, “There’s my school!…RLS—like me!”

While Sharp says he knows well when not to overstep “the bounds of decorum” by talking too much, he’s currently been talking for over five minutes straight. But he says he loves his job more than gabbing. And it’s not lip service: Sharp drives 12 to 14 hours a day, every day. “Driving is too much fun,” he says. “What is fun is to share, save and help people. I get a charge to get out and do it. I’m out there every single day.

“Cab driving is an adventure—you never know where you’re gonna go.”

The former Navy boatsman has another reason to love his current job. About two years ago, he took a Peninsula woman to the Monterey airport, but she missed her flight. “She was crying. I took her to San Francisco for free, and her flights were cancelled there. I waited for her at the airport.”

Three weeks later, the two moved in together, and have shared and apartments near Lovers Point ever since.

Sharp says customer service comes naturally, and makes him popular.

“I know what I do for people is good because of how I feel after taking care of them,” he says. “How many people want to ride with me? I can’t count that high. And I’m not into the money or the tip. I turn off the clock in traffic. I can’t stand the clock myself sometimes.” (Sharp adds that his popularity also prevents him from granting all but a few direct requests for rides, an honor he reserves for some of his favorite seniors.)

Of course, Sharp grudgingly admits, he’d be willing to bet his approach nets bigger tips in the end anyway.

Sharp says complete client service also means playing two other roles. One is taxi tipster. “I tell folks you own that cab: if a cab driver doesn’t do what you want, don’t pay ‘em, just get his number—the cops will always be on your side.”

The other role is even more appreciated. “I’ve been called guardian angel many times...” he says, “[After one near accident] people said, ‘You just saved our lives.’”

All in all, it seems this well-tatted cabbie with the fingerless leather gloves may be onto something bigger than just going from place A to B. Like evolving and distributing his not-so-normal philosophy: Love what you do. Enjoy the ride. Take care of people. And let the rest take care of itself.

He points out a tattoo next to the image of a fallen friend on his right arm. It’s the Japanese symbol for sensei, or teacher.

“I guess you could say I teach life,” he says, “and happiness.”