A criminal on the run? Check. Two drunk elderly women seeking a threesome? Check. A repentant murderer? A possible ghost? A stabbing victim who doesn't seem to know he's been stabbed? Check, check and check.

Come up with an outrageous scenario and Jesus Rivera has likely seen it play out during his 43 years driving for Yellow Cab of Tampa.

No one has driven for the company as long as Rivera. It's likely no one around here has a lengthier tenure as a cabbie, says Louis Minardi, Yellow Cab of Tampa's chief executive. And in Minardi's opinion, no driver has more colorful tales than Rivera.

"I could listen to him all day," he said.

But Rivera's personality is wasted in today's digital age.

"These gizmos," said Rivera, 75, pointing to his cab's mounted tablet computer that doubles as a meter. "People used to talk to me. Now they barely say good morning. They just look at their screens. I miss conversations."

If you've been in Rivera's mini-van cab and stared at your phone rather than talked, you missed out.

With his gravelly voice that still has hints of his years in Puerto Rico and New York City, Rivera can captivate for hours.

His funniest fare? Two "little old ladies," he laughed, trying to kiss him while on way to a Plant City mobile home park. "It was one o'clock in the afternoon and they were drunk and trying to grab at me. I get to the home, they pay me and ask me to come inside. I took off at 90 miles per hour."

The strangest ride goes to a man who asked to be taken to a hospital to figure out why his back hurt. Later, Rivera realized his back seat was soaked with blood. "He was stabbed," Rivera said. "Did he know? I don't know."

His largest fare was $850 for driving illegal immigrants to New Jersey. "I dropped them off on a farm they said had work and a life for them," Rivera said. "God bless the United States."

His creepiest? Someone from what was thought to be an abandoned home on the corner of Bayshore and Gandy boulevards that other drivers had long called the "spooky house."

"A tall pale skinny man gets in and says take him to a funeral parlor," Rivera remembers. "I think smoke was coming from his eyes. Maybe he was a ghost."

His most criminal ride? Rivera says he may have unwittingly been the getaway driver for a bank robbery.

He was called to drive a man to and from a bank on Fletcher Avenue. Shortly after leaving the bank, he heard police sirens behind him.

Rivera pulled over, the passenger tossed him the fare and a tip, then bailed out and apparently got away. "I still don't know what he did," he said. "Maybe he robbed the bank?"

His most memorable fare was when a "cowboy" asked to be driven from the downtown Greyhound station to the Broadway Bar on Seventh Avenue for one beer and then back to the bus depot.

"I said, 'I need to know why you did this,'?" Rivera said. "He sadly said, 'I killed a guy there 20 years ago. I needed to go back and see it.'?''

"I'm never bored," Rivera said. "I'm not just a driver. I feel like a priest, a counselor, a friend."

He has helped celebrities avoid the press, provided history tours to out-of-towners, consoled the heartbroken on their way home from a breakup, celebrated with newlyweds leaving the courthouse and spoken spiritually with adults being driven from the airport to a childhood home after the loss of a parent.

As for newborns, his cab has nearly welcomed life too many times to count. "A baby was coming out as a woman got on a stretcher at Tampa General," he said. "That was the closest."

Prior to his cabbie career, Rivera was a New York-based merchant marine. He lived in Tampa for just two weeks before joining Yellow Cab in 1975.

"I sailed the world," Rivera said. "Now I cruise Florida."

He's only been stiffed on a fare once and never been robbed. "I'm too ugly to mess with," he laughed.

Still, the job is dangerous, and he says his wife of 47 years worries about him in the same way she would if he was a police officer or firefighter.

Twice, luck kept him safe from driving a murderer.

Among his former regulars was John Musa. But on one evening in 1988, Rivera was not nearby when Musa called for a cab after a heated argument with family. He took his anger out on the driver who picked him up.

"The driver, Claude Heyn," Rivera said, "was stabbed to death."

On another occasion, both Rivera and a fellow driver who were parked next to one another answered a call at the same time. Rivera gave it to the other driver who said he needed the money before he left for military service.

The cabbie took the man to a hotel, where another passenger got into the taxi and later shot the driver.

"We don't know what a guy is carrying," he said. "We have to go every place. We cannot say no."

Even after 43 years, he has no plans to retire.

"I enjoy being around people," he said.

That's good news for his regulars.

"He's like family," said Mary McDonald, who Rivera has driven home from her waitress job at Pach's Place for 18 years.

Fifteen years ago when her daughter broke her leg, she called Rivera for a ride. "He rushed over and even carried her," McDonald said. "He's the kindest."

And, she added, the best storyteller. "He needs to write a book."

Contact Paul Guzzo at pguzzo@tampabay.com. Follow @PGuzzoTimes.