Doctor Vasectomy

Quick story: I'm holding the baby and watching the kids run around at the play place at Tampa's International Plaza when the guy sitting next to me asks: "Which ones are yours?"

"Those two," I say. "And this one. But that's it."

"That's it?" he asks.

"Yep. Impossible now."

He thinks for a second.

"Dr. Stein?" he asks.

"Yep," I say. "In and out in 15 minutes."

"Me, too," he says. Then he gives me a fist bump.

Here's Leonora LaPeter Anton: TAMPA

The architect is flat on his back, a paper sheet draped over his lap. His wife wanted him to get a vasectomy after child No. 3. He hesitated. Four months ago, he welcomed child No. 4.

Dr. Doug Stein hovers over him, a bottle of Betadine in his hand.

"Exposing your privates to some stranger is not the greatest thing, I know," he says as he works to sterilize Chuck Allen, 42, at his office in North Tampa.

"Yeah, that was probably part of it," Allen mumbles. A faint burning smell fills the room.

It's done.

Guys like Allen come to Stein at the rate of 50 a week, 200 a month, 2,500 a year.

They're trusting it all to a man they probably first saw larger than life while driving 70 mph down some highway, a guy who does vasectomies by the busload, a guy whose services are marketed on coasters in bars, in pamphlets in child support offices and on billboards all over Florida.