Risky delivery business

“It’s like a guessing game,’’ Santos, 31, said of his job as a delivery man for Belleville Avenue’s Metro Pizza and Sandwiches. “You never know.’’

While the job offers Santos some adventure and plenty of good stories to tell over beers, it is also an inherently hazardous profession, as highlighted by the recent death of Thu Nguyen, a Chinese food delivery man in Lawrence, who was attacked and left with a fractured skull on a sidewalk after he responded to a fake order. He died the following day at Tufts Medical Center.

“I feel empathy for’’ people like Nguyen, Santos told a reporter who accompanied him on his rounds last week. “Obviously, in the back of my head I’m like, ‘That could have been me.’ ’’

Attacks on food deliverers are a chronic part of the urban crime beat and follow similar patterns, according to police officials from several cities.

In Boston, there have been almost 30 incidents this year, a police spokeswoman said. In Worcester, Sergeant Kerry Hazelhurst said his department comes across robberies and assaults of delivery drivers on a weekly basis. He said the numbers are consistent with those in previous years.

In most instances, police said, deliverymen are lured to quiet areas with phony orders. Once they arrive, assailants hiding inside buildings or behind bushes jump out to rob them of food, money, cellphones, or jewelry.

“It’s definitely a vulnerable population,’’ New Bedford Police Lieutenant Jeffrey Silva said of food deliverers. “People who perpetrate these crimes are predatorial in nature. It’s like the lion looking for the weakened wildebeest.’’

Last year, New Bedford saw a spate of attacks on food delivery men, mostly those delivering pizzas, but only one arrest was made, Silva said. Fortunately, he said, this year there have not been any noteworthy incidents in the city.

Santos, who has had his current job for three years, knows from personal experience that he cannot take the risks too nonchalantly. Once, when he arrived at a house at night, a group of 20-somethings opened the front door slightly to tell him to bring the food to the backdoor. When he refused, they began badgering him for change. Ultimately he was able to make them pay, and he got away. But he knew he had been in danger.

“Usually I give people the benefit of the doubt,’’ said Santos, the brightness of his blue shirt and bandana matching the enthusiasm with which he greets his customers.

Born in New Bedford to Portuguese immigrants, Santos is family-oriented, he said. A white cross hangs from the rearview mirror of his black two-door 1994 Acura, which he bought from a junkyard for $750. Below the cross are lesser means of sustenance: a large iced coffee and a pack of cigarettes.

Santos said he does not see his job as perilous, but recognizes its challenges.

He works six shifts a week, less than 40 hours, and gets minimum wage. For each dollar of delivery charge, he receives 50 cents. On a good shift, he gets as much as $40 in tips. Bigger tips would be fantastic, he said, but also improbable, given an economic downturn that has hit customers’ wallets and generosity.

Some delivery trips offer strange adventures, like the time a group of big dogs came bounding from a farmhouse toward his car. He barely managed to avoid being bitten, rolling up his windows just in time.

Another time, a prank caller had him driving up and down the same street looking for an imaginary address.

His favorite story is of the woman who called, crying, begging him to tell her boyfriend she was not cheating on him with Santos. He had delivered food to her a few days back and his cellphone number had been stored temporarily in hers.

Someday he would like to get away from it all and own his own restaurant. But for now, his job helps him support his girlfriend and two children, Cadence, 4, and Tristan, 1.

Last Thursday evening, he delivered pizzas, grinders, and sodas mostly to single-family homes with well-trimmed lawns.

For his last order at about 9:45 p.m. he arrived at a three-story tenement on a desolate stretch of Eugenia Street.

Balancing a red bag of food in one hand, he squinted at a slip of paper. The instructions seemed simple: third floor, backdoor, call the residents when there.

But the directions were exactly the kind that make him feel uncomfortable and cautious when he goes to an unfamiliar address.

Still, he went to the back and climbed the staircase to the top. Luckily the lights were on.

“This is the toughest part,’’ he told a reporter, not knowing who might be waiting behind the door, away from the street and from easy means of escape.

He knocked eight times in quick succession.

Eight more taps. Silence.

He called the phone number listed on the slip.

Someone answered and a wave of recognition hit him. It was an old acquaintance, Nathan Patterson.

“Patty, is that you?,’’ he said, relieved.

Jayakrishna can be reached at njayakrishna@globe.com.