By Armando Varela

LOS ANGELES – Luis Pizarro, an actor and producer who was born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents, has parlayed his work repossessing automobiles from delinquent debtors into a successful television program.

He received a call years ago from some reporters with Telemundo, the country’s No. 2 Spanish-language television network, for a special series on a day in the life of a repo man.

Now Pizarro employs some 20 people and produces four television programs for both Telemundo and truTV, an English-language cable network, from his office in Burbank, California.

Lou, as Pizarro is known, grew up watching “The A-Team” on television and said that action-adventure show inspired the programs he makes in collaboration with a team that includes his sister, Sonia, and his daughter, Lindah.

“All my life I was inspired by ‘The A-Team,’ a great show we used to watch growing up. We watched ‘The A-Team’ in English and ‘Los Magnificos’ in Spanish. I was a big fan of Mr. (Stephen J.) Cannell (the show’s producer) and his programs like ‘The Greatest American Hero’ and others, and all my creations have something of ‘The A-Team,’” Pizarro told Efe.

But his start in the repossessions business was less glamorous.

After working at airports, enlisting in the U.S. Marines and looking for work with the Los Angeles Police Department, he met a man at a gas station whose rare truck sparked his interest and who offered him a job as a repo man.

Luis gladly accepted and began working that same night.

After several years in the business, some fellow parishioners at Pizarro’s church helped him produce a pilot program of “Operacion Repo,” which Telemundo acquired in less than two weeks, in 2006.

It became one of the highest rated shows on Telemundo’s Channel 22 in Los Angeles, prompting the creation of a English-language version of the program that was acquired by truTV.

“I think the characters are the secret of our success. We’re real, not actors. This is what we are and what we do, my sister, my daughter, my brother-in-law and my employee. People love us for that, because they can approach us and say hi and take a photo and get a hug, and we haven’t changed. We’re thankful for that,” he said.

Manheim, a company that sells autos to dealers in the United States, estimates that in 2008 alone there were 1.6 million cars repossessed due to non-payment, and although there is no exact figure, Pizarro said that in just the Los Angeles area the number could reach 10,000 vehicles per month.

Repo men – and women – are generally hired by financial institutions that decide to repossess a vehicle in accordance with a purchase contract or credit contract. They are typically paid $400 per unit they take back.

The business is regulated and repossession agents must act within legal bounds, but the show is popular with viewers because of the potential danger involved, something Pizarro – who says the show is entertainment and nothing else – recreates by using actors “on certain occasions.”

He says the “repossession business can be dangerous if one is not smart and someone comes up to you in an inebriated state. You can’t be disrespectful and you can’t let your guard down, because that’s when it becomes dangerous.”

Pizarro also has had success as a producer.

Besides “Operation Repo” for truTV, he produces three shows for Spanish-language television: a tattoo-centered program called “Dame Tinta” (Give me ink); a show featuring free-lance reporters, “Cazadores de la Noticia” (Newshunters); and a bounty-hunter feature, “Fugitivos de la Ley” (Fugitives from the law).

Pizarro says his dream is to become a director, although in the short term he wants to take the lucrative step of having his famous show internationally syndicated, meaning “Operation Repo” would be seen “in all parts of the world.”

But even as his ambition grows, he says he “remains loyal” to the Hispanic community that helped give him his start in the entertainment business. EFE