At the gritty corner of 27th Avenue and West Broward Boulevard, folks know there’s one man to see if you’re short on cash: “Daddy.”

“Daddy” is Bob DiMattina. He’s not a loan shark. He’s a pawnbroker.

His ability to make quick loans of small amounts of cash gives him near-royal status in a neighborhood where money is often tight.

“I could run for mayor in this neighborhood and beat Carlton Moore,” DiMattina said, referring to a Fort Lauderdale city commissioner. “They love me here.”

Most pawnshops are small businesses, owned by local proprietors. Giant chains like Cash America are the exceptions.

But some of these small businesses, like DiMattina’s Payless Jewelry 2 pawnshop, do quite well.

And the owners of the shops present a stark contrast with their low-income clientele.

In fact, about the only bond DiMattina has with his customers is money: He’s got it; they want it.

The same might be said of Phyllis Goodman and Jerry Singer, part-owners of Mo Money pawn on Sunrise Boulevard. Their store is surrounded by a chain-link fence with hand-lettered signs imploring passing drivers to “Pawn Your Car!”

In contrast, their $120,000 home in the Cross Creek development of Plantation is surrounded by landscaped lawns and tree-lined streets.

Classic Pawn, with its cluttered shelves, iron bars and at least one pistol-packing clerk, has apparently done well by owner Frank Gambardella.

He owns a waterfront home in the private Davis Isles neighborhood near Hollywood.

East Side Pawn on South Federal Highway has done similarly well by father and son co-owners Max and Hal Wasserman. Father Max, who owns another pawnshop in Lauderhill, said he earns a “nice living … six figures per store.”

Wasserman scoffs at the notion that pawnshops regularly receive stolen goods.

“There’s no reason to do anything illegal in this business,” Wasserman said. “You know what the rates are.”

He was referring to the 300 percent annual interest rate the new Florida Pawnbroker’s Act allows pawnbrokers to charge on loaned money.

Wasserman, who opened his first pawnshop in 1979, said the secret to his success is volume, making lots of loans for relatively small amounts of money – $50 or so.

“I’ve got people coming in here pawning things for 10 bucks to buy Pampers,” he said. “It’s pathetic.”

But those low-dollar loans are a valuable service that his customers can’t find anywhere else, he says: “The police have tried to put a bad light on the pawnshops. But guess what? We’re the good guys.”

There is one other thing some pawnbrokers have in common with some of their clients: brushes with the law.

In 1994, Gambardella was cited for not filling out pawn slips as required by law. As part of a plea agreement, he was sentenced to six months’ probation and ordered to pay a $250 fine.

Wasserman, of East Side Pawn, pleaded no contest to dealing in stolen property charges in 1986. Because it was his first offense, the finding of guilt did not go on his record.

Larry Farb, owner of Gold Coast Jewelry and Loan Co., 714 N. Federal Highway, was sentenced to probation after pleading no contest to theft charges in 1992, court records show. He was arrested again in 1995, charged with eluding a police officer and possession of marijuana; Farb pleaded no contest to the drug charge and was ordered to pay a fine, court records show. The other charges were dropped.

Goodman, Gambardella and Farb either declined to be interviewed or could not be reached by reporters for comment.