• Name: "Jon Law"

• Age: "48"

• Family: "Wife, Carol; children, Annaka, Zacheus, Jonathan, Joel, Krystal, Nathaniel, Samuel; 13 grandchildren"

• City of residence: "Yuba City"

• Occupation: "Painting contractor, owner of Law's Custom Painting"

• How long have you lived in the Yuba-Sutter area? "Since 1970"

• Hobbies, interests: "Reading, gardening, hiking"

• For what groups do you volunteer? "The Zero Tolerance Anti-Graffiti Program through the Church of Glad Tidings for about five years. I'm a painter by occupation, so I figured it would be a good way to give back in a practical way to the community. We work with local law enforcement and concerned citizens, rely on volunteers and donations to paint over graffiti. Just look for little squares painted on abandoned buildings and overpasses — that's us."

"Boy Scouts — I have two sons involved in Scouts and it encourages me to spend time with them. I'm just a parent volunteer, go on campouts and hikes, help with events and fundraising."

"A Hand Up Ministry — for about three years and am a board member."

"Hands of Hope — helped on the construction of the facility."

"Creative Light Theatre — I was involved with it for a long time, acting, until about five years ago and came out of retirement to participate with my family in 'Fiddler on the Roof' ."

"In the past — Babies Out of Bondage. We cared for babies born to incarcerated women, taking care of children in my home. It's the same reason we're foster parents — we've been doing that off and on for about 15 years — trying to help children and families in need. For both programs you have to be good at getting over a broken heart."

• How do you fit it into your schedule? "You make it part of your lifestyle."

• How did you start volunteering? "I've just always been involved, serving at church, different organizations I've been involved with. Even through school, when I was a student and when my children became students."

• Words of advice: "Find something you're interested in, enjoy doing, and get involved. Once you make a commitment, keep your commitments and be reliable."

• Quote: "(Volunteering) brings purpose and meaning in your life to be involved with something bigger than yourself."

Even on his two days off this week, he had a paint roller in his hand.

Leo Machado, a Marysville father of four and professional house painter, still isn't finished with his mission as a member of the Zero Tolerance Graffiti Busters.

Buildings in downtown Marysville, including the Hotel Marysville, State Theater, a car dealership, a furniture store and a fitness center had been tagged by a compulsive vandal during the weekend.

"It was a lot of stuff," Machado said after spending five hours on Monday and an hour and a half Tuesday trying to cover the most visible damage.

The graffiti, a simple scrawl repeated over and over, was the work of a single, familiar culprit, said Lou Binninger, who founded Graffiti Busters 20 years ago.

"He was on foot, and he just worked the whole area," Binninger said. "One person can cause a lot of damage because it's a passion for him. It becomes a battle of wills."

And his army, he said, is always up to the task.

"It's a felony," Binninger said of the crimes he and his volunteers paint over. "It's a big deal."

Binninger is on call with the Marysville and Yuba City police departments, as well as Yuba and Sutter sheriff's offices.

If a patrol officer spots graffiti, Binninger said, dispatch gets notified, and Binninger receives an e-mail notifying him of the location.

From there, either Machado or Yuba City painter Jon Law will likely get the call to go out and make it go away, or help find somebody else who will.

Binninger runs his operation — as well as a Trauma Intervention Program, or TIP, and tattoo removal service called, "Tats Off," — through the Church of Glad Tidings, north of Yuba City.

The graffiti removal project, he said, used to involve teams of volunteers who went out on the weekends. But Machado and Law, who almost always have the necessary equipment and paint on hand, get called most frequently now.

Occasionally, groups of people come to help out on a temporary basis.

Last year, a political science class from Yuba College sent student volunteers. And Juvenile Hall frequently uses the program as a community service outlet for inmates, who sometimes wind up cleaning up their own messes.

"We work with whoever wants to work with us," Binninger said.

He keeps a running list of sites that need work. The most visible or offensive sites get triaged for immediate attention, and usually are assigned to the pros.

A graffiti drawing made by teenagers on an overpass in Linda a couple months ago — featuring an aspect of the male anatomy, writ large — was deemed offensive, and covered within a couple hours of being reported, Binninger said.

Speedy response, he said, "takes the sizzle out of it" for the perpetrator.

Binninger and Law say they abide by the "broken windows theory," made popular by social scientists in the 1980s, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s.

As the theory goes, if a few broken windows in an urban area go unrepaired for too long, vandals will break more. If the building is unoccupied, they may even break in and cause further damage. This attitude toward other property in the area — and the neighborhood in general — will catch on, and soon, blight will dominate, followed by an escalation in crime.

"It happens. It's very real," Binninger said. "So we've taken an aggressive stance. We're not going to surrender the community."

"The more tidy neighborhoods are," he said, "the tidier they'll stay."

In the case of gang-related graffiti, which makes up the majority of what Binninger's volunteers see, the message sent can be particularly dangerous to a community.

"Most of the graffiti in our area isn't what you'd call street art," said Law. "Ninety percent of what we see is Norteno and Sureno gang-related."

An uptick in gang graffiti can signal the start of an increase in other gang activity, he said, and should be taken seriously.

Binninger has run a volunteer program at Juvenile Hall for decades. He says he keeps up with crime trends and some of the most prolific local perpetrators.

"I know 'em from Juvenile Hall to jail to prison. I know what they do," he said.

Often, he gets to know the vandals who get caught.

There are a half dozen sites on his to-do list that need to be painted over or removed.

Some are under bridges or in out-of-the-way spots. But Binninger's graffiti brigade will get to them eventually.

"There's a lot of action out there," he said.