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Keith McCord Reporting It's a case of mistaken identity with a little bit of embarrassment thrown in. A small charter school in Ogden thought it landed a big star to speak at a fundraiser next week. It was the hottest ticket in town, until a reporter for the Ogden Standard Examiner found out the school booked the wrong guy!
The DaVinci Academy of Science and the Arts is a tuition-free public school. It opened in 2004 and has 263 students. The folks running the school decided to hold a fundraiser later this month-- its very first fundraiser. They needed a keynote speaker and wanted to see if comedian Jon Stewart from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" did those sort of things.
They did an Internet search for Stewart and found a link.
"When you click on the link, it doesn't send you to a web page, it goes to an e-mail. The email led to conversations. Conversations led to negotiations. Pretty soon we're all excited, we've got Jon Stewart."
Instead, they had booked a different Jon Stewart, from Chicago. Jon A. Stewart was a professional wrestler for 20-years; does do motivational speaking, ran for congress, and is currently involved in real estate and the family auto business.
He admits he gets inadvertent emails for the comedian Stewart and tries to clarify the name similarities whenever people contact him. He has no hard feelings for the Davinci Academy and he hopes the misunderstanding and resulting worldwide attention makes the fundraiser a success.
Jon A. Stewart: "If it helps the school keep the tickets without canceling, I think it's wonderful. If it gives more light to the school, what it's trying to accomplish, and the unfortunate aspects of the story, I think it's great."
The fundraiser will still go on as planned next Thursday, with a different comedy act as well as music and theatrical entertainment from Weber State.
The school says only a few people have called and asked for refunds, but they still expect to sell-out the program. That's 800 tickets at 50-bucks a piece.
