Mariecar Mendoza • The Desert Sun • August 24, 2009 This year, a local organization boasted a star-studded gala in honor of war veterans
and active soldiers. Now, the group has scaled back on the event but vows that they have not scaled back on their cause. Scars to Freedom, an Indian Wells-based charity, held the first in a series of fundraising events on Friday and Saturday. The group aims to provide free scar treatment to soldiers disfigured in combat, and eventually wants to raise enough money to create a scar treatment recovery center in the Coachella Valley. The Scars to Freedom event in March was originally slated as a black-tie gala at the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort, Villas & Spa with a concert at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. Among other big-name acts, music mogul and producer Timbaland was marketed as one of the headline performers, and the group advertised that First Lady Michelle Obama was set to make a special address via satellite. But days before the event, issues between the organization and the event’s executive producer, Brian Quintana, surfaced, and reports of Quintana’s legal battles with Hollywood stars tainted the scheduled event. Further, celebrity representatives listed as associated with the event claimed they never signed up to participate, making the gala look less legitimate. Since then, Scars to Freedom founder Guadalupe Ponte said the group had to figure out how to gain credibility so it can pull off what she hopes will be an annual, signature event for the organization.
“We kind of laid low for a bit because we wanted to really figure out what our producer got us involved in,” Ponte said, referring to Quintana, adding that the organization hasn’t been in contact with Quintana since March. “We postponed our event because we weren’t sure what was going to surface.”