Maverick Aid Group Brings Food, Medicine to the World’s Hot Spots

Whoever says chivalry is dead hasn’t met “Sir” Edward Artis.

The former TV and movie producer and mortgage banker has spent the last 30 years delivering food and medicine to refugees in the world’s hot spots -- often ahead of established relief organizations. For his efforts, he was inducted into the Knights of Malta, a modern international group known for its charitable work. Hence, the so-called title, which helps him gain entree to developing nations, he said.

Tonight, Artis leaves on his latest humanitarian mission, this one to deliver $800,000 worth of medical supplies to poor villagers on the outskirts of Manila.

Meanwhile, his West Hills-based nonprofit group, Knightsbridge International, continues to work to raise $500,000 to deliver to Iraq nearly $10 million in medicine from an Amsterdam pharmaceutical company. The group has raised $36,000 so far.

A former Army paratrooper and medic in Vietnam, Artis, 57, said helping the downtrodden is his calling. He left paying jobs to devote himself full time to his charity work. His wife, Patty, supports the family financially.

Artis, originally from Concord, Calif., and his two Knightsbridge partners -- Jim Laws, an Ohio cardiologist, and Walt Ratterman, an electrician from rural western Pennsylvania -- have participated in relief missions to Bosnia, Cambodia, Cuba, Ecuador and Honduras among other nations.

Artis has plenty of war stories. He said he and Laws spent two weeks delivering aid to survivors of the genocide in Rwanda. In Chechnya, he was thrown off a train and left in the middle of nowhere. He bribed warlords in Azerbaijan to get medicine to refugees. And the group delivered $8 million worth of food, medicine and blankets to refugees in Afghanistan, after U.S. troops ousted the Taliban in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Although the group does not operate through channels used by most charities, Artis said it is still effective.

“We are looked upon by some as cowboys, but it doesn’t matter to us how we look,” he said. “We work for the elderly, children and the invalid. Giving to them is worth any of the slings and arrows that people throw at us.”

Yet, Knightsbridge has supporters, including the U.S. Air Force as well as nongovernmental organizations.

The Washington Kurdish Institute, a nonprofit group created to raise awareness of Kurdish issues, praised the group for daring to go into dangerous places where the population needs reassurance that the international community cares about them.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald C. Wurster said the group helped “save lives, ensure the health and safety of our personnel as they built positive relations” with the Filipino people during a relief mission in November.

Unlike many established charitable organizations that are forced to wait outside the borders of a war-torn country for permission to move in, the small Knightsbridge group bypasses such restrictions. Sometimes the three men work alongside the military and other times they have paid off warlords to enter a country.

“We don’t play that game. We aren’t trying to win the Nobel Peace Prize. We aren’t worrying about our perceived relationship with warlords, criminals or military,” Artis said. “We don’t waste time trying to change policy; we just try to get it done.”

In its zeal to do that, Knightsbridge has made its share of mistakes, Artis said, sometimes promising more aid than it can deliver or insufficiently planning how to safely get into and out of a country.

In Iraq, the group is proceeding more cautiously, waiting to make sure it has the funds to buy the necessary medicine and to distribute it properly, Artis said.

“This is not Club Med in Baghdad. This is a place where people could get kidnapped or killed for their foolishness,” he said. “Where there is poverty, degradation and hopelessness, there is danger. We prefer to be the wise owl as opposed to the young owl.”

Once on the ground, Knightsbridge gives personal attention. “We don’t dump aid off the back of a truck or warehouse it,” Artis said. “We have a responsibility to our donors to deliver the aid hand to hand, eye to eye and heart to heart.”

Donations to Knightsbridge International may be made online at www.kbi.org or www.paypal.com. For details, call (818) 372-6902.