Phoenix, Arizona- If you’ve jumped bail and are approached by a pretty blonde in a tight tank top with a friendly smile and an easy laugh, you might want to consider making a run for it.

Chances are she’s Sandra Scott of Queen Creek, and her camera crew won’t be far behind.

Scott is a mother of two and former stripper, turned pro wrestler, turned porn star, turned private investigator who has parlayed her talents for show business and tracking fugitives into a reality show. “Wife, Mom, Bounty Hunter” on the WE network features Scott’s balancing act between her duties as a wife and mother and her profession as a recovery agent. The show’s April 20 debut was the WE channel’s strongest showing for an original series.

“You go into a lot of situations that are going to be volatile and unpredictable, and you have to be able to remain calm in the face of danger and hostility,” says Scott, 41. “Being the mother of a teenage daughter really qualifies me for that.”

Television critics have described Scott’s show, which debuted April 20, as a cross between A&E’s “Dog the Bounty Hunter” and Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” It’s a comparison that makes Scott shake her head and laugh.

“You know, the only thing Dog and I have in common is the fact that we’re both bounty hunters and we’re both blond,” she says. “That’s where the similarities end. … I don’t do things like he does, and that works for me.”

Most bounty hunters probably wouldn’t treat their “skips” to McDonald’s before taking them to jail, as Scott did in Episode 2 with her husband, Ron, a former electrician who is a licensed recovery agent. Most bounty hunters probably wouldn’t have fretted over the fate of a fugitive’s beloved dog. And most bounty hunters probably don’t apply another coat of lipstick before a takedown.

Scott, who says her record speaks for itself, offers no apologies for her style.

“People are saying, ‘You’re too soft,’ ” says Scott, a native Californian. “Obviously, it’s working for me.”

Scott, who has only been in the fugitive recovery business since 2004, has no official law enforcement background — something most bail agents look for when hiring a bounty hunter — but attended the Nick Harris Detective Academy in California, where she studied to be a private investigator and took courses on fugitive recovery.

“It’s 98 percent mental,” says Scott. “Very little of it has to do with how strong you are, how fierce you are, how well you handle a gun. It’s outthinking your fugitive.”

In Episode 2, Scott created a fake MySpace page to lure the boyfriend of a 23-year-old meth addict who had jumped bail. The boyfriend led Scott and her husband to the young woman.

“The other guys can put me down all they want, but of all these cases, not one guy would have ever found that girl,” says Scott, who points to the MySpace incident as the cleverest ruse she’s ever used.

“One time I called the mother of a fugitive and told her that I was a girl he had gotten pregnant and I needed to find him and tell him,” says Scott, who bursts into laughter. “She goes, ‘You mean I’m going to be a grandma? Do you know what it is?’ She was all excited. Terrible.’’

Most male bounty hunters probably wouldn’t have done that, either.

Scott moved to Queen Creek in June 2006 for the same reasons as many of her fellow Californians — cheap real estate and a spectacular view.

“We bought our house (in California) for $221,000, and it was worth $500,000 after four years,” says Scott. “And during that same time we were having a hard time affording living in California, even though we’re both natives. Our quality of life was piss-poor, money was going into our house and our insurance and stuff.”

After hearing about the real estate market in Arizona, the couple moved with their two children to Queen Creek. Scott, who set about finding work as a recovery agent, got her first job in Arizona when she walked into Duran’s Bail Bonds in Florence and asked for work.

“I rarely see any women bounty hunters or bail enforcers,” says Linda Duran, who owns Duran’s. “My first impression of her was that she was some biker chick. You meet so many people in this business that you can never judge a person by the way they look.”

Duran sent Scott on a fairly simple recovery — pick up a girl right outside the courthouse, which Scott completed successfully and earned her more jobs — and friendship — from Duran.

Scott says she honed her investigative skills chasing a dad — her 15-year-old daughter Sabree’s biological father.

“A lot of times I say I should send him a thank-you card,” says Scott. “It was this personal experience that forged who I am today. I essentially took lemons and made lemonade out of it.”

Scott says she spent 13 years tracking her daughter’s father from state to state as he worked for cash and hid his assets. (The law at the time didn’t pursue parents as it does now, she says.) She likes to point out she did all this before the Internet.

“Now, I can find anybody,” says Scott.

Scott says she eventually closed in on Sabree’s father and offered him a deal: Go to jail and pay back child support, or give up his parental rights. “I backed him into a corner so hard he waived his rights,” says Scott.

Scott was born Sandra Schwab in 1966 in Richmond, Calif., into a family of policemen. Her grandfather and stepfather were officers in the San Pablo Police Department; her great-grandfather was a cop in Denver, and Scott has siblings who served in the U.S. military.

Although Scott came from a law enforcement family, she was drawn into the seamier side of the entertainment industry: At 18 she became a stripper in San Francisco to make money for school … and come to terms with childhood sexual abuse, says Scott.

“Working as an exotic dancer, in a strange kind of way, was therapeutic for me,” she says. “Being forced to work in an environment where I had to be cordial with men forced me to see them as whole human beings. Before working as an exotic dancer, I hated men.”

At 20, Scott “hung up my stripper’s heels” and moved to Southern California to be an actress. In 1987 she was cast as Tiffany Melon in the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, a campy female league that ran from 1986 to 1992.

“I was the woman that opened every single show on the typewriter with that funny little gossip column and that hideous giggle,” says Scott, who performed with the league for four seasons. “I had the gold costume and the jeweled neckline, a silly laugh and bleached-blond hair.”

After leaving GLOW, Scott acted in adult films for two years under the name Tyffany Million. Her stint in that industry cost Scott her first job as a bounty hunter working for the security firm World Protection Group.

“They found out I used to do adult films, and they cut me like that,” says Scott, who blames the firing on a female associate who was uncomfortable with Scott’s past. “And that has nothing to do with how I do my job.”

Scott says she has no regrets about working in adult entertainment. Her experiences have formed who she is today. But those ventures also have given her online critics — whom she believes are former colleagues — plenty of material for vitriolic commentary.

“To this day they still post nasty messages about me on the Internet,” says Scott. “But the fact still remains I have my own business and my own TV show. So, shut up.

“The end result is where I want to be.”