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Janet Ortiz, 11, who suffers from a kidney disorder, walks down Third Street Promenade on Sunday,

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Janet Ortiz poses with actress Amanda Bynes at the “Robots” premier.

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Janet Ortiz reads a magazine at a Beverly Hills nail salon as she prepares to meet stars of the m

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Ortiz gets her hair curled at a Westwood hair salon before walking the red carpet.

She pulled up to the exclusive Henri’s Salon de Beauté in a black Excursion – the same one that drove Leonardo DiCaprio around Los Angeles during his stay in the city for the Oscar’s last week.

With an entourage of people behind her, camera flashes in her face and passersby peeking in the tinted windows of the SUV asking who was inside, she was a celebrity.

For one day, Sunday, 11-year-old Janet Ortiz forgot about the kidney disease she has that puts her on dialysis four times a week, the kidney transplant for which she’s on a waiting list and the numerous medications she takes on a daily basis.

As a beneficiary of the Red Carpet Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by a UCLA alumnus last year, Ortiz and her mother, Myra, were uprooted from their difficult lives and transformed into Hollywood celebrities.

The day started with a chauffeur driving them out of their home in East Los Angeles and ended with a walk on the red carpet for the “Robots” premiere in Westwood.

Ortiz is one out of about a dozen people dealing with a life-threatening challenge to be benefitted by the Red Carpet Foundation since its creation, said founder Jason Bow, who graduated from UCLA in 2003.

Bow, Ortiz, Myra and several UCLA-affiliated volunteers for the foundation walked the decorated Broxton Avenue leading up to the Fox Theater to the beats of the Blue Man Group, on the trail of the likes of Halle Berry and Robin Williams. The blue confetti blowing in Ortiz’s face and the hula hoop dancers didn’t distract Ortiz from mingling with the stars.

While getting her hair styled in Henri’s salon earlier in the day, Myra said she prefers this trip to Westwood to all the other frequent trips she makes to the pediatric dialysis center in the UCLA Medical Center.

“The reasons we come are not good,” she said. But, she added, “it’s a nice area.”

The foundation is relatively new, but its founders have aspirations to help beneficiaries from all over the nation, and even establish international branches in the future, Bow said.

Bow’s unusual passion for premieres – he has attended over 100 in the last five years – and his desire to help people have merged into a blend of charity and celebrity that provides an escape for several challenged individuals in the campus community.

An escape on screen

Bow realized he could turn his love for movie premieres into a charitable act when he took close friend and UCLA student Chris Jackson to the “Daredevil” premiere in 2003.

Jackson, an orphan from the age of three, watched television and movies as an escape from a broken childhood as he “bounced around” from foster home to foster home throughout Southern California.

“This is what I always wanted to do. All I did when I was a kid was watch movies,” Jackson said as he was describing his meeting with Colin Farrell.

“When it happened, it was just so overwhelming to me. ... It didn’t change my life, but it did give me a perspective; it definitely changed my viewpoint on life, about what I’m doing to help others,” he said.

Bow said he was amazed that a movie premiere – an event to which he had been numerous times – could have such impact on another person.

Jackson, now a fifth-year theater student, said he was so inspired that he started a red carpet student organization to help raise funds for the foundation. Club members say they hope to become as big and raise as much money as Dance Marathon, the student group that raised close to $200,000 for pediatric AIDS last weekend. Rapidly growing in membership, the club is planning a celebrity basketball tournament for the spring to raise funds for future beneficiaries.

Never having a traditional family, Jackson depended on support from friends to help him survive his hardships and now, he says he wants to give back.

As he watched Ortiz shriek as teen celebrity Amanda Bynes walked by while the Blue Man Group performed on stage, Jackson said he had flashbacks of his first premiere.

“Being on the red carpet is ageless,” he said.

A Hollywood outsider

As his animated expressions and hand gestures do half the storytelling, Bow relates experience after experience he’s had at movie premieres, and his passion for the red carpet flows.

He tells the story of his first movie premiere, “Three to Tango,” when he and his friends – dressed in jeans and shorts – accidently stood next to the movie’s stars as the cameras flashed in their faces.

Bow is a wealth of historical facts about the red carpet. He mixes dates and places with stories of encounters with celebrities: He goes from a story about an awkward moment sitting next to Monica Lewinsky during a premiere of a movie consisting of several oral sex jokes to describing the first red carpet event at the Egyptian Theater in 1922. Though his knowledge of Hollywood’s history is fitting, as Bow graduated with a degree in history, he admits much of his education came outside of the classroom.

“I’ve been going to red carpet events since I started UCLA. ... I honestly became addicted to it; I didn’t go to class. I focused my studies on the red carpet,” he said.

He said he hopes to one day open a museum in Westwood dedicated to the red carpet – an icon that came “before the Oscars, before the Hollywood sign, even before movies had words,” he said.

As he attended premieres in Westwood and Hollywood, Bow said he realized that tickets were often given away to people on the street “like me, who just ask for it.

“Why can’t we put these tickets to better use and give them to people who might be able to use this to overcome whatever illnesses and challenges that they face?” Bow said he thought at the time.

Bow funds most of his foundation’s work out of his pocket and through donations from the community.

He added that he sees his foundation as an opportunity to have something positive result from the negativity that is often seen in the money-driven Hollywood industry. He believes he is “manipulating for good.”

Bow’s love for the theater may only be matched with his love for Westwood.

He once climbed to the top of the tower of the Fox Theater to see how one of his favorite cities looks from one of his favorite landmarks.

“I know the Fox Theater like the back of my hand,” he said.

“She’s happy”

The Fox Theater became a carnival on Sunday as balloons, robots, men covered in blue paint and a frenzy of paparazzi took over a freshly carpeted street that is typically filled with students smoking hookah or eating ice-cream sandwiches.

And in the middle of the secured festivities was Ortiz – armed with a small digital camera and a determination to meet all the celebrities.

Myra cherished the day because her family doesn’t usually get a chance to go out for fun, she said, while the group stopped for lunch in Santa Monica in between hair and nail appointments.

Ortiz has two younger sisters and a brother on the way. Her sisters would be jealous of her today, she said.

Though 11, her illness has made her small in stature, and she becomes tired easily. On the previous day, after undergoing a dialysis session, she said she was too exhausted to walk across the street to the cafeteria.

Though Myra said Ortiz took care of herself Saturday in preparation for her busy day as a celebrity, she still became tired after her walk on the red carpet.

After the premiere, she opted to go home instead of to the after-party.

But, posing shoulder-to-shoulder with Ewan McGregor, answering Greg Kinnear’s questions to her, and walking the red carpet with her made-over mom, Ortiz couldn’t wipe the smile off her face.

Volunteer Wesley Flanagan, also a fourth-year psychology student, whispered to Jackson: “I think she’s happy.”