Airbrush Artist Mickey Harris in Banning to Work on 'K9 Heroes' Ambulance Job

A high-profile airbrush artist from Tennessee is in Banning this week to custom-paint a Ford ambulance as rolling tribute to search-and-rescue, police and military dogs.

Mickey Harris has appeared on cable programs including Overhaulin', Car Crazy, Garage Mahal and Drag Race High, and he's painted vehicles for celebrities such as Ted Nugent.

Harris, 55, flew into Palm Springs on Sunday and came straight to on West Ramsey Street in Banning, about 85 miles east of Los Angeles.

On Monday he conferred with Charles Young, 30, manager at Ding Masters, and Stan Houghton, 56, of Poppett Flats, an experienced airbrush artist, painter and pinstriper.

The job was commissioned by a charity nonprofit called America's Forgotten Heroes, of Los Gatos, south of San Francisco, Ding Masters owner Rob Linn said.

The artists are in the process of trying to recreate a heart-wrenching image from a funeral service in Iowa for fallen Navy SEAL Jon T. Tumilson, when his dog Hawkeye lay down by his casket for the entire service, Linn said.

Tumilson, 35, of San Diego, was among 30 Americans and eight Afghans killed Aug. 6, 2011, when a rocket-propelled grenade disabled the Chinook troop transport helicopter they were in. It crashed on what became the deadliest day for U.S. forces in nearly a decade of conflict in Afghanistan.

Harris, Houghton, Young and Linn said they are in a hurry to complete the project because they hope comedian-personality and animal rights advocate Ellen DeGeneres will feature the Forgotten Heroes project on her show in the near future.

They also plan to have the ambulance ready for the 26th Annual Genesis Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills on March 24.

Presented by The Humane Society of the United States, the Genesis Awards recognize individuals in news and entertainment media for producing work that raises public awareness of animal protection issues. DeGeneres accepted a Genesis Award in 2010 and she was involved in presentations at last year's event.

"We have a friend of Ellen's that's going to be out here later this week, as we get a little ways into it," Harris said. "Hopefully that will bring awareness to Ellen, and we'd love to see this on her show. It would be tremendous publicity for what this project is. We're hoping there, that's hoping stuff. But we want to have it there at those awards."

Young said the job came to Ding Masters by chance and necessity.

"They contacted Mickey Harris to do the custom airbrush, and we've worked with him in the past," Young said. "He contacted us to see if we could use the facilities here, and some of us to help him get this vehicle done for the organization," Young said. "Mickey actually flew out of Tennessee on Sunday and arrived here same time as the ambulance.

"Mickey's pretty well-known for his tribute work, a lot of 9/11 vehicles, a lot to do with the military and our armed forces."

Houghton runs his mobile business Howtons Custom Pinstriping & Gold Leaf from Poppet Flats. He said he was called in on the project because he's local to the Pass area.

"I'll be bringing some of my airbrush paint equipment and an opaque image projector," Houghton said.

"It's a projector like you can take a picture, a snapshot, put it on the projector, and blow the image up on the side of something, so instead of having to draw it in, you can work off the projection," Houghton said. "An artist's tool for doing large murals. . . .

"Rob and these guys are getting it ready for the paint. They're going to leave the flag scene on it. Then we'll go in and put the dog scenes on it. Mickey is the project manager and he has more idea of the big picture what we're going to do."

Harris said he came from his home Cosby, Tennessee.

"I live where the old moonshiners and car thieves are, way up in there where 'Deliverance' was probably written," Harris said.

Cosby is east Tennessee, northeast of Gatlinburg, and it borders the northeast section of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Harris said he started painting vehicles when he was 17 and he's been doing it professionally ever since. He said he came from Tennessee to Banning to do this project for next-to-nothing because the theme and purpose appealed to him - with some convincing from his wife.

"I do a lot of charity stuff," Harris said. "This is a great cause for the dogs. They want to have a vehicle to bring awareness to service dogs. And to tell you the truth when the woman emailed me at first I looked at it and I read through what she was wanting and I thought 'You know I do so much charity, nyaaah' . . . kind of I was blowing it off.

"Now my wife, I call her Ellie Mae Clampett, because my wife is a huge animal lover and we have 16 dogs ourselves. She started conversing back-and-forth over the internet with Kris, the lady that brought this project to us, and it didn't take too long between those two, with information she was sending, very cool stories about the sacrifices these dogs make, it became very emotional for my wife, and that was it for me."

A little money has been funded for the project, but "it's small potatoes to what I normally charge," Harris said. "The artwork on this would normally be about a $30,000 job. And they're basically picking up the room and board, you know, that kind of stuff."

Harris said the story of what search-and-rescue, police and military dogs have done is what won him over in the end.

"Some of the money that was raised to get me out here was raised by some Vietnam vets, and they said they didn't want any recognition out of it. The lady who set this up asked them why, and they said, 'Because we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for those dogs we had in Vietnam. And when we left Vietnam, America didn't bring those dogs back. They either shot them in the head, executed them, or left them in-country. It's a travesty and it still haunts us to this day that we didn't bring those dogs back.'

"There's legislation nowadays, these dogs we have in Afghanistan and Iraq, they want to make sure these dogs get the honor that they've earned for the American lives that they've saved. And to make sure they get brought back too, and treated like the heroes that they are.

"You know a dog is so loyal," Harris said. "We're going to put images on here that we hope touch people. We're going to show images on here that are strong. We want people to get emotionally attached and touched by what we paint here.

"So that's our job is to convey that message. To raise awareness: Dogs are the most loyal creature to a human, far more loyal than we are to each other, and we should have some kind of loyalty to them, it's only the right thing to do."

With March 24 less than two weeks away, Harris said he is confident he and his crew in Banning can finish the job on time.

"We will. It'll get done, even if we have to sleep when we're dead."