Szarabajka enjoyed his first successes in regional theater, and has continued to perform regularly onstage. He chose an acting career at age 19 and joined Chicago's Organic Theater Company; years later, he won a local Emmy award for his strong work on "Bleacher Bums", which he co-wrote and in which he also acted. He later performed on Broadway in "Search and Destroy", "Warp!" and "Doonesbury", appeared Off-Broadway in "Digby" and "Class Enemy", and worked regionally with the National Playwrights Festival and the New York Stage and Film Company.

Szarabajka has enjoyed his widest exposure, though, on the small screen. An early appearance came via the TV-movie "The Face of Rage" (1983), but his breakthrough came with his recurring role as Mickey Kostmayer, right hand man to the eponymous hero of "The Equalizer" (1985-89), CBS' moody adventure series. He only appeared in four episodes during the show's first season but made a strong impression, and his role was expanded every season thereafter, to the point where he was a regular on the series' fourth and final season. Szarabajka subsequently tried a series again in the intriguing lead role of an aged janitor who keeps growing younger after a laboratory accident in "Stephen King's 'Golden Years'" (CBS, 1991) but the show was pulled long before Szarabajka could shed much of his makeup. He endured a similar fate as a crafty, high-powered executive on the even shorter-lived Fox-TV drama, "Profit" (1996). Szarabajka, though, has kept busy via guest stints and TV-movies such as "Nightlife" (USA, 1989), "One Woman's Courage" (NBC, 1994) and "Hyde in Hollywood" (PBS, 1991), being especially memorable as a vicious gossip columnist in the latter.