Todd Jewell didn't realize he would earn the thanks of the FBI when he sat down at the Banner Bank in Lynnwood, Wash., late Friday afternoon. Neither did the Old School Bandit, who could now be renamed the Well Beaten Man.

The bandit might still be on the loose if he had taken a moment to look around the branch before launching what FBI agents believe was his ninth robbery in the past two months around Seattle.

It would have given him a chance to see that Jewell -- all 280 pounds of him -- was sitting right there in the waiting area.

Instead, he slipped his bandanna over his face -- the hat and glasses were already in place -- then approached the teller in his usual aggressive manner, FBI agent Larry Carr said.

"At that point, I said to my wife, 'You've got to be kidding me. This is a bank robbery,'" Jewell, 26, said in a telephone interview Saturday afternoon on his way back from Seattle.

Jewell was right, but he wasn't ready to be dead and right, so he waited to see if the man had a gun.

Seeing no weapon, Jewell finally decided to act when the robber lay across the counter and grabbed the female teller's shirt.

He rushed up behind the man, who must have heard him coming. The suspect, thought to be about 170 pounds, slipped off the counter just in time to smack into Jewell's formidable chest.

The fight -- Bodybuilder vs. Bank Robber in their once-and-only-once event -- was on. The first round was called by the cops, who showed up about two minutes after the bell rang in the 9-1-1 center.

Jewell, a 1999 Eisenhower High School graduate, summarized the secret to apprehending a bank robber something like this: Grab his hair, pound his face repeatedly into the floor and drop a knee into his ribs. Wait for the crunch, then let the guys with the badges and handcuffs take over.

Jewell was assisted somewhat by the male bank manager, but the suspect kept trying to escape.

"He just kept going and going, and we were really beating on him. He was really desperate to get out of there," Jewell said.

Carr said the lengthy prison sentence the suspect faces might have inspired him to resist the odds.

The suspect had served several years in federal prison for four bank robberies earlier this decade. He was released to a halfway house recently, left one day and never came back.

The FBI believes he spent his time on the loose robbing nine Seattle-area banks in the past two months.

Agents dubbed him the Old School Bandit because they likened his use of the bandanna to Old West robbers.

Unlike most bank robbers, he would slip on a mask, aggressively demand money from the teller and slip away. The frustrating part for the FBI was that he only had to dump the mask in order to avoid resembling the robber.

Even with none of the tellers able to describe his actual features, agents thought they had him identified, Carr said. Until Jewell came along, however, they were still looking.

Carr said it's rare -- in the next-to-never sense -- for bank customers to take such an active role in catching a robber.

Jewell's exploits became the story of the day for the Seattle news media as soon as the FBI released an account of his bravery Saturday morning.

Jewell -- a former bouncer at Jack-sons Sports Bar but an aerospace machinist by trade -- wasn't thinking of the limelight when he decided to make his tackle, but he was glad for the chance to help. He said he would do it again -- but his wife is rethinking whether she wants to be a bank teller.

That's why they stopped by the bank in the first place. Afterward, the grateful Lynnwood teller and her husband took them out to dinner.

Now Jewell and his wife are back in Yakima, where he hopes to continue his progress toward a professional bodybuilding career.

He realizes that the bank robbery may help get him some valuable name recognition in the sport, but that wasn't on his mind about 5 o'clock Friday.

"It kind of puts us in a positive light. We're not just throwing our weight around in the gym -- we can actually do some good if it's needed," Jewell said.