Benefit Gives Guatemalan Children HOPE

Giving hope to children who are starving and badly in need of medical care in Guatemala was the goal of a benefit Friday for the Santa Ana-based Humanitarian Outreach Programs--Esperanza (HOPE).

About 150 guests attended the first-ever Doctors’ Mission for HOPE Benefit Dinner at the Robert Mondavi Wine & Food Center in Costa Mesa.

The benefit was staged to support a HOPE project that will send a team of 35 doctors to Guatemala in October. The $175-per-person gala included a silent and live auction and raised about $32,000.

Mission for Children

The team of doctors will also train local physicians so they can perform follow-up treatments.

“We’re hoping to give these kids a second chance,” said Dr. Ismael Silva, national medical director of HOPE.

Silva told guests about his recent visit to Guatemala, where he saw children living in garbage dumps and on the streets.

Guatemala’s infant mortality is second highest in the world, and poverty and war in the country have generated 200,000 orphans, he said.

Rose Anderson, president of HOPE, founded the organization after she visited Guatemala in 1987 to see her daughter and son-in-law, who work there as missionaries.

“My heart was very touched by the needs of the children,” she said. HOPE is also working on starting an orphanage in Guatemala.

While the cause was a serious one, the mood was anything but somber as guests paid tribute to winners of HOPE’s humanitarian and achievement awards.

Those honored were actors Hector Elizondo (the harried hotel concierge in “Pretty Woman”), Maria Conchita Alonzo (seen in “Predator 2”) and Edward James Olmos (“Stand and Deliver”), who was unable to attend.

Wined and Dined

Guests dined by candlelight at tables adorned with bouquets of red roses. In addition to a variety of its wines, the center served chilled roasted pepper gazpacho, rib-eye of beef with roasted garlic butter, sauteed zucchini and yellow squash, oven-browned rosemary potatoes and a summer berry cobbler.

HOPE plans to make the dinner an annual event, with proceeds funding additional missions to Guatemala and other troubled areas of the world.

Guests included Nilza Lopez, director of international medical and social services for HOPE, actress Dyanna Ortelli (“Colors” and “Hill Street Blues”), Jaime Aviles, Julie Blix, Wade Farber, Evelina Fernandez, host Mike Gomez, Brian Graham, Wendy Groner-Strauss, Danny Jaro, Henry Silva and Lyton Williams.