When Aerial Photographer Flies High, His Junkyard Dog Does, Too

They call a professional football player “Refrigerator,” so aerial photographer George T. Sandy of Tustin sees nothing outrageous about calling his female co-pilot “Junkyard.”

“That’s where I found her,” explained Sandy, who operates from John Wayne Airport and uses five planes for his photographic work. “I call her a pure-bred junkyard dog, but the vet says she’s part terrier and Chihuahua.”

Junkyard accompanies Sandy on aerial photo flights in all of his aircraft, storing herself under his seat when he takes pictures and sitting on his lap during straight flight. So far, the dog has recorded about 800 hours of flight time.

“She seems to know when I’m working and when I’m done,” he said, and points out that on high-altitude flights (12,000 feet and higher), Junkyard shares his oxygen mask. “We’re both used to it now,” added Sandy, who says he is pilot, photographer, mechanic and chief dog keeper of his company, which is called Aerial Eye Inc.

And never mind that the dog only weighs five pounds, said Sandy, who found the “really filthy and crummy” dog 2 1/2 years ago in a junkyard beside a dirt airstrip in Needles, where he sometimes sets down to give free rides to the kids around there. “She’s a tough critter. She once took on a really big golden retriever and lost big. She needed 28 stitches.”

Although the 3-year-old dog was hardly a brilliant fighter, “she’s really smart, so much in fact that I have to resist the temptation of turning her into a trick dog because she’s so programmable,” he said. “She’s so loved by everyone I have three of her litters already promised.”

To keep her warm on flights, Sandy finds it convenient to tuck her inside his shirt, a sanctuary he utilizes for her when checking into hotels.

She is called Junkyard, but her dog license is imprinted with “Junkie” because her name was too long to fit. “Everyone thinks that’s completely out of character,” Sandy said.

L.A. Rams football players Gary Green, LeRoy Irvin, Johnnie Johnson and Nolan Cromwell aren’t the Fearsome Foursome, they’re the Smokebusters, named after a musical video made by and at Cal State Fullerton to help the American Cancer Society for the recent Great American Smokeout.

The song started with “When you get that urge to buy that pack, who you gonna call? Smokebusters!” The act included a chorus of Irvine School District students and nonsmoker “cheerleader” Tina Dekas, a 1983 graduate of Cal State Fullerton, who was being urged to give up smoking in the video.

“I had to learn (how to smoke) very fast,” she said. The video ends by showing a young boy throwing his pack of cigarettes to Johnson, who stomps it with his cleats.

The Smokebusters win.

Acknowledgments--Mildred (Midge) Taggart of Anaheim, who served eight years as president of the Anaheim Museum while it was forming and looking for a permanent site, presented with the museum’s annual Friend award only days after the Carnegie Library became the museum’s first home.