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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, October 11, 2007

Mendez off to Ethiopia to help

Advertiser News Services

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Sonya Mendez

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Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser
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Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Michelle Rodriguez

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Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

David Hasselhoff

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Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Bobby Brown

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Entertainer Sonya Mendez leaves today for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to participate in another round of Rotary Polio Plus immunizations and plans to revisit Jilo Ager, the village where she and colleagues last year promised to drill a "Well of Hope." The well, she said, will mean that "children will not have to wake up at 3 a.m. every morning to walk a three-hour roundtrip to fetch water from a dirty river."

Last year, Mendez led a fundraising campaign for the project that now has nonprofit status. (You can donate at www.thewellofhopefoundation.org.) Plus, $1 from each sale of Mendez's "Back to the Islands" CD goes to the project.

She hopes to get Hawai'i performers to record a "We Are the World"-style song that she is co-writing with Bryan Kessler and Tim Bowden as a prelude to a "Concert for the Well of Hope" in 2008.

— Wayne Harada, Advertiser entertainment writer

RODRIGUEZ GETS JAIL AFTER ISLE DUI

LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has sentenced former "Lost" cast member Michelle Rodriguez to six months in jail for failing to complete the community service and alcohol monitoring required by her probation sentence.

Rodriguez appeared in court before Judge Daviann L. Mitchell, who ordered her to report to the county jail on Christmas Eve.

Mitchell also ordered Rodriguez to complete the full 30 days of community service, cleaning streets and highways.

Rodriguez's probation sentence is in connection with drunken driving incidents in Los Angeles in 2003 and Kailua in 2005.

BOBBY BROWN HAS MILD HEART ATTACK

LOS ANGELES — Bobby Brown — by all accounts a healthy 38-year-old —spent Tuesday night in a hospital in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley after suffering a mild heart attack, his Atlanta-based attorney, Phaedra Parks, announced yesterday.

Parks said doctors "attributed (the attack) ... to stress and diet." She said Brown, who was released from the hospital yesterday, "is in great spirits; he's doing very well."

HASSELHOFF PUTS SELF IN HOSPITAL

David Hasselhoff, who is still in the middle of a custody negotiation with his ex, Pamela Bach, was hospitalized overnight Tuesday after the admitted alcoholic had a "brief relapse," his rep tells www.TMZ.com. The Web site reports that The Hoff went on a booze bender and then checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. for alcohol poisoning.

The rep said Hasselhoff "immediately recognized the importance of addressing (the relapse) with the assistance of his doctors."

www.TMZ.com says the actor checked out of the hospital yesterday and is doing just fine. The Hoff is due back in mediation in his custody case today.