KEVIN DRISCOLL and I have something in common - resistance to the cell phone thing and a willingness to use pay phones, even on spooky, misty nights after the corner gas station has closed. What can I tell you? We just haven't gone cellular yet, and maybe we both like to live life on the edge. Yeah, baby: The pay phone at 10 o'clock on a gloomy night when there's no one else around - that's a minute or so of living dangerously.

Of course, Driscoll didn't see it that way. (And I don't, either; I was just saying that stuff for dramatic effect.) Driscoll needed to call his brother, to see if he was home before driving over there, and he saw no grand risk in using the pay phone at the gas station in the 5800 block of Belair Road in Northeast Baltimore. "I was just a couple of blocks from my own house, and I could have stopped at home and called my brother from there, but I didn't want to," Driscoll explained. "I would have had to get out of my car, unlock the house and go inside to use the phone."

And you know how that goes. Once inside the house, then you're checking the mail and flipping through the pages of the new Sports Illustrated, looking for a quick snack in the refrigerator, listening to telephone messages, and before you know it you've forgotten why you came home in the first place.

So Kevin pulled his 1996 Acura Integra onto the parking lot of the gas station, got out and walked to the pay phone there. He did something he never does - he left the keys in the ignition.

"I feel safe in my own neighborhood," Driscoll says. "And Steel was in the back seat."

Steel is his black Labrador retriever. Driscoll has had him for about four years - since the dog was 2 and his original owners were divorced.

Driscoll found two quarters and dropped them in the pay phone slot. He started to dial his brother's number. "I had just dialed the area code when I felt something in my back."

Something like the barrel of a handgun.

"Give it up," snapped the voice behind Driscoll, presumably that of a man attached to the aforementioned weapon.

"I don't have anything," said Driscoll, who is 55 and a city employee.

"Give it up!" the voice said again.

Driscoll turned to face the stickup man, who appeared to be in his 20s and wearing a baseball cap under a hooded sweat shirt.

"Don't look at me!" the gunman shouted. "Turn around, give me your car keys."

"I don't have my car keys, they're in the car," Driscoll said, and out of the corner of his eye he noticed a second young hoodlum over by his Acura, with the car door open. There was something else Driscoll noticed - the gun in the hand of the hoodie next to him. This Driscoll and I have much in common, because he did what I would have done in that situation - he ran away.

"I took off up Belair Road and got behind a car near an alley near the liquor store, Six Pax & More," Driscoll says. "Next thing I know, these guys are in my car and they floor it out of the parking lot, south on Belair Road."

With Steel in the back seat.

This was not only an armed robbery and theft of an automobile. This was a Lab-napping.

Driscoll ran into the street and screamed for help. A young woman emerged from a rowhouse and handed him - Can you guess? - a cell phone. Driscoll called police.

Officers from the Northern District arrived in about three minutes and took a report. Kevin Driscoll walked home. His car was gone, his nerves were shot, and his faithful companion was missing.

He and assorted relatives searched for Steel throughout Northeast Baltimore. They called the animal shelters.

Nothing.

No Steel.

Driscoll assumed the car thieves had abandoned the dog, but where?

A week later, Driscoll got a call from Robert Jackson, a Baltimore police detective. The Acura had been found - outside a Moncks Corner, S.C., convenience store that three men were apparently casing for an armed robbery. Two suspects - the detective told Driscoll they were from Baltimore - had been apprehended inside the car. Police impounded the Acura, and Driscoll's insurance company paid for its shipment back to Baltimore.

"The car wasn't damaged," Driscoll said. "But there was all kind of clothes and junk inside. It smelled like crooks."

Maybe that scent had something to do with what happened next. (You didn't think I'd leave you with a sad ending to a dog story during the holiday season, did you?)

Four days later, a neighborhood kid came to Driscoll's back door and yelled, "Mr. Kevin, look what just come down the alley!"

It was good ol' Steel - wagging his tail, tongue flapping, and pretty soon toes tapping on the ceramic floor in Driscoll's kitchen. The dog jumped when he saw his master again - the first time in 11 days.

Driscoll couldn't believe it. The dog had lost some weight but otherwise appeared healthy. "He was hungry, of course," Driscoll said. "And he slept for a day and a half."

What we don't know is where the car thieves abandoned Steel, whether they took him all the way to South Carolina, and whether the dog made the long journey home completely on his own. Steel knows, but he's not talking.