Rick Harrison (Courtesy Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Richard Kevin Harrison (born 1965) is a Las Vegas businessman and reality television personality, best known as the co-owner of the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, as featured on the History series Pawn Stars. Harrison is co-owner of the pawn shop with his father Richard Benjamin Harrison, which they founded in 1988 when Harrison Jr. was 23. Harrison dropped out of high school in order to "pursue his career selling $2000 fake Gucci bags".

Early life

Richard "Rick" Harrison was born in 1965 in Lexington, North Carolina is the third child of Richard Benjamin Harrison, Jr. a U.S. Navy veteran, and JoAnne Rhue Harrison. Harrison is the younger brother of Sherry Joanne Harrison (died aged six), and Joseph Kent Harrison, and the older brother of Christopher K. Harrison. Harrison's son, Corey, has mentioned that his grandmother stated that they are related to President William Henry Harrison. Harrison has indicated that he does not give much credence to this idea, though Harrison's father, Richard, has stated that they are distantly related to Benjamin Harrison.

In 1967 Harrison's father was transferred to San Diego, California, and the family relocated with him. As a child, Harrison suffered from epileptic seizures starting at age eight, which would confine him to bed, and lead to a lifelong love of reading. He became particularly enamored of a series of books by John D. Fitzgerald called The Great Brain, whose main character, a ten-year-old Utah con artist named Tom D. Fitzgerald with an ability to conjure money-making schemes, greatly influenced Harrison. Harrison also developed a love of books in general, in particular on physics and history, with his favorite area of historical study being the British Navy, from the late 1700s to the early 1800s. Harrison attended Taft Middle School, which is part of the San Diego Unified School District, but dropped out during tenth grade.

The Harrison family relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada in April 1981 after the collapse of his parents' real estate business. When Harrison was 17 his girlfriend, Kim, became pregnant. Despite a subsequent miscarriage, Harrison and Kim decided to marry. Two months after their wedding, Kim was pregnant again, and their first child, Richard Corey Harrison was born when they were both 18. Within two years their second child, Adam, was born. Harrison worked for his father in the Gold & Silver Coin Shop, and even worked repossessing cars. Soon after Adam's birth, Harrison and Kim separated, with Harrison and his second wife, Tracy, assuming the responsibility of raising his sons.

Career

Businessman

Harrison and his father founded the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop less than two miles from the Las Vegas Strip in 1988. The business was founded to mainly pawn items, but also accepts items to buy and sell. When Las Vegas Boulevard bordering the pawn shop was named the Nevada's 16th scenic byway in 2001, Harrison noted "weird stuff" that occurred on the boulevard and humerously observed about Las Vegas Boulevard, "It's more of an abstract highway than a scenic byway." By 2005, Harrison and his father were loaning out about $3 million annually, which brought them about $700,000 in interest income. A year later, in 2006, Harrison was known in Las Vegas as a pawn broker having special sports items that came complete with a story, including a 2001 New England Patriots Super Bowl ring that belonged to American football cornerback Brock Williams. Yet, in 2008, his business continued to service gamblers, who, according to his son, often came in to "pawn something so they have gas to get back home."

According to Harrison in 2010, the items most often brought into the store are jewelry. Since the inception of Pawn Stars, Harrison's inventory now has a ratio of 5,000 items pawned per 12,000 items of the store's total stock. In 2010, the National Pawnbrokers Association awarded the Pawnbroker of the Year Award to Harrison for his contributions in enlightening the public about the pawn industry.

Television

Harrison spent four years pitching the idea of making a show about a pawn shop after his shop was featured in the show Insomniac with Dave Attell in 2003, but his efforts did not yield success. In 2008, Brent Montgomery and Colby Gaines of Leftfield Pictures came up with an idea about a reality show based in a Las Vegas pawn shop and approached Harrison. The series was originally pitched to HBO, though the network preferred the series to have been a Taxicab Confessions-style series taking place at the Gold & Silver's night window. In a February 2009 Youtube.com video entitled, "Pawn star$", Corey promised to gun down an intruder with a handgun he displayed and a woman screamed as she was removed from the store after demanding that the wedding ring her husband sold to the shop be returned.

Nancy Dubuc of the History Channel changed the format, which included the on-camera experts appraising the items brought into the Gold & Silver as well as personality dynamics of the store's staff and patrons. Initially to have been titled Pawning History, the program was renamed Pawn Stars at the suggestion of a Leftfield staffer, playing off the term "porn stars" for more marketing appeal. The show features Rick and his father, Richard Harrison (known on the show by the nom de guerre "The Old Man") along with his son Corey (a.k.a. "Big Hoss") and Corey's childhood friend and employee Austin "Chumlee" Russell. In January 2011, Pawn Stars was the highest rated program on the History Channel, and second-highest rated reality show program behind Jersey Shore.

On November 7, 2012 Harrison made an appearance as an antique store owner on the TV series The Middle.

Author

In 2011, Harrison published a biography called License to Pawn: Deals, Steals, and My Life at the Gold & Silver. His book reached #22 on The New York Times Best Seller list on June 26, 2011.

Personal life

In 2012, Harrison, who was twice divorced, announced his engagement to DeAnna Burditt, and that they planned to wed in 2013. He has two sons, Corey and Adam, with his first wife Kim, and one son, Jake, with his second wife Tracy.

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