‘Cookie Man’ Cabby Drives Sweet Chariot

There are cheerful people in the world. There are people happy in their work. Then there’s Bill Pitzer, a cookie-baking cabby in a league of his own.

Pitzer bakes about 1,500 cookies a week for those who ride in his taxi, doormen at hotels and the other cabdrivers lined up at the airport.

There’s no charge for the treats, and they come with a bonus not found in every bakery: a smile.

“People don’t expect something like that when they get in a taxicab,” Pitzer said. “I just enjoy it. I have fun doing it.

“I work six or seven days a week. I’m always on call, so these people are like my extended family.”

Pitzer, 57, calls himself “Cookie Man” on the receipts he gives to riders. His baked goods can include muffins, cheesecakes, chocolate chip cookies or pineapple upside-down cake.

“We have a lot of customers who call and ask for him,” said Sandy Moore, who owns Hoosier Cab Co. “They’ll say, ‘How about the Cookie Man?’ ”

The Cookie Man drives a 1993 Ford Crown Victoria, the sun visors covered with two dozen photos of his three grown daughters and his seven grandchildren.

As he pulled around a city bus, Pitzer lamented that he was temporarily cookieless, unable to bake the night before because he had to work late.

The taxi is his second career--or third or fourth, if you count various stints as a jazz and bluegrass guitar player.

Pitzer worked on a railroad after high school in Indianapolis and was a salesman for a plumbing-fixtures company when the business was sold a dozen years ago. Now he puts in 80,000 to 100,000 miles a year as a cabdriver.

“There were eight kids in our family, and I picked this up from my mother,” Pitzer said of his baking. “She used to take nothing and make a gourmet meal out of it.

“I’m like a mad scientist when I get in my kitchen,” he said. “I’ve got chocolate mocha cookies, I’ve made grapefruit cookies. I’ve got some good ones you ought to try.

“Chocolate chip-peanut butter with fresh strawberries and bananas.”