After it was all over, what David Logan remembered was the quiet. Although it happened on a muggy Sunday night in July, the streets were as hushed and still as if it was the morning after a heavy snowfall. The absence of car engines and chatting pedestrians allowed David to clearly hear the voice through the open windows of his blue van.

"Cross now! Cross now!" a man ordered two women, casting a fearful glance back as the trio hurried across Joppa Road in Towson.

David's wife, Lisa, seated next to him in the van, voiced his thoughts: "Something's wrong."

Until that moment at 10 p.m. on July 25, their day had been bittersweet. The Logans, of Towson, and their two sons, Michael, 15, and Bryant, 11, had attended a going-away party for one of Michael's best friends. David and Lisa didn't find it odd that they had been invited to a teen-ager's party. Through the years, as they'd cheered for Michael at football games and wrestling matches, they'd gotten to know his teammates. No matter how tight their budget, their sons' friends were always welcome for dinner. Just tonight, the teen-ager who was moving told Michael he wanted one thing when he came back to visit: Lisa Logan's mashed potatoes.

Lisa's hand, stretched toward the van's back seat, held tightly to Michael's as they reminisced about his friend. When they heard the man's voice, they stopped talking.

Lisa wasn't surprised when David made a U-turn and followed the man into a Texaco station. If someone was in trouble, her husband would help. It was one of the first things she had noticed when she met him in junior high school.

But she wasn't prepared for the man's next words: "I think Popeye's is being robbed!"

David immediately turned the van toward the fast-food restaurant just yards away. He pulled into the parking lot and stopped by the back of the restaurant. Though he couldn't see into the main dining area, neither could his van be spotted by anyone at the counter's cash registers.

All David could see was a glass-enclosed hallway that ran alongside the building, leading past the bathrooms to an exit. Suddenly, through the glass, he watched the door to the women's room inch open.

The employee huddled inside mouthed a frantic message: "Call the police. He's still inside!"

Lisa Logan didn't know that the young woman, named Tiny, was a mother, too, and that's why she had risked her own safety by unlocking the bathroom door. At any minute, Tiny's aunt would arrive to pick her up. With her would be Tiny's year-old daughter. If Tiny wasn't outside, they would enter the restaurant.

Lisa had never seen such terrified eyes.

The Logans didn't have time to form a plan. But instinctively, the family split in different directions. Lisa ran to a nearby restaurant for help. David and Michael moved toward the restaurant's back exit. Little Bryant stayed in the van.

Then, just a few feet from David and Michael, the back door of Popeye's flew open.

Inside the restaurant, a 16-year-old employee named Shnika Jordan lay on the kitchen floor next to three customers and two colleagues.

She had listened as the robber, clad in a black ski mask and wielding a gun, ordered the manager to unlock the safe. "Nobody try anything funny," he'd instructed.

Should she stay quiet? Should she run?

She kept her head down, trembling and praying.

A moment later, the manager entered the kitchen, alone. "He's gone," she said.

Outside, it was just beginning.

The robber pulled off his ski mask and shirt. He stuffed the items into a backpack along with a gun.

Then David Logan slammed into him.

As both men tumbled to the pavement, David locked his arms around the robber's neck and shoulders, pinning the man's left arm to his side. But the man's right hand, clutching the backpack, was free. He swung and connected with David, who at 5 feet 9 inches and 170 pounds was by far the smaller of the two.

Hanging on

The man stood up, with David still hanging onto his neck. One thought remained fixed in David's mind: Don't let him reach into the bag.

Meanwhile, Lisa stood in the middle of an Italian restaurant, shouting for someone to call the police. When a waitress locked the door behind her, Lisa spun around: "Let me out! My family is out there!"

As she ran back toward the parking lot, she noticed two things. One was the unnatural quiet; the streets were completely empty. The second was the sound of a fist smacking flesh -- Michael's fist. He had tackled the robber in a wrestling move, trying to protect his father.

Though David and Michael looked like opposites -- David was blond and wiry; Michael, dark and husky -- the two were undeniably alike.

Both loved sports. Both also rooted for the underdog. Lisa still remembered how David had protected the smallest boys in their junior high school, twins named Vernon and Verdell, from bullies. Just recently, David had phoned in an order to Domino's Pizza. When he gave his name, he was greeted by a delighted yell. Almost two decades later, Verdell still remembered.

David was proud that Michael took after him, but he drew one important distinction: His son would finish high school.

Sometimes on weekends, he took Michael along on construction jobs. After a day spent filling Dumpsters, he'd warn his son: "Stay in school, or this is what you're going to do."

Now, as Lisa ran toward her husband and son, she noticed one more thing: Bryant had gotten out of the van and moved toward his father and big brother.

"Get in the van and lock the doors!" Lisa yelled.

He complied, a stricken look on his face.

Lisa watched in horror as the robber once again rose to his feet, nearly lifting her husband off the ground. Michael twisted his legs around the man's, and the three collapsed to the pavement.

Joining the fray

Lisa rushed toward the struggling group and grabbed the man's kicking legs. He was too strong; she couldn't pin them down.

Her family was everything to Lisa, and she was helpless to protect them.

She knew some people's eyebrows raised when they realized she and David had gotten married at age 16, a year after Michael was born. One reason why they tried so hard to keep their family whole was because they knew the odds were stacked heavily against them. Teen-age fathers weren't supposed to stick around -- that's what one of Michael's teachers had informed him.

But David had been different. He'd worked three jobs, as a carpet cleaner, night dishwasher and bartender's helper, so she could stay home with baby Michael, and then, four years later, with Bryant.

Ed Marbury, David's English teacher at Loch Raven High School, still remembered what David said when he informed Marbury he'd have to leave school: "It seems like just yesterday I was riding a Big Wheel, and now I'm going to be a father."

Marbury, who kept in touch with David as he raised his sons, said, "Being a father is exactly what he has done."

Now the Logan family was under attack. Lisa couldn't stand to watch. She lifted her foot and kicked the man as hard as she could.

Maybe three minutes had passed. David was losing strength, but he couldn't relinquish his grip. The robber had bitten his neck, repeatedly punched him, and grabbed his groin. Michael kept hitting the man's back, but the robber wouldn't stop struggling.

Finally, the sound of sirens filled the air.

Bryant leapt from the van and ran to the corner, waving the speeding procession of police cars into the parking lot.

Officers rushed out of cars, and one turned pepper spray on the still-fighting suspect. Only then did he stop struggling.

Later, after the Logan family returned home, Lisa remembered how her husband's hand shook so badly he couldn't fill out the police report. She remembered the terrified employee, Tiny, hugging them tightly, and the police discovering the gun was actually an air pistol.

She and her husband sat Bryant down and praised him for obeying Lisa. "You did everything right," David told his younger son.

Moments of pride

Michael couldn't stop thinking about what had happened. He was proud of his father, but that feeling wasn't new. He was proud every time he looked into the stands during a football game and saw his dad cheering. He'd been proud three years earlier, when his father studied night after night with Mr. Marbury and finally passed the GED exam.

David cherished Mr. Marbury's gift: A cap and gown from Loch Raven High.

Michael wasn't shaken by what had happened, but David was. What if one of them had been badly hurt? he wondered. Had they done the right thing?

David had never stopped to think about what he was doing; he just acted. It would have torn him up if the robber had shot somebody in Popeye's and gotten away. But if his son had been injured, or worse...

David turned to Michael. "I don't know what I would have done if he had pointed that gun at you," he said.

That thought kept him up all night.

But would they do it again?

Probably, said David.

Probably, said his son.