A Heart To Hang On To

The charity effort began when NIN’s Trent Reznor learned about Eric De La Cruz, a fan desperately in need of a transplant to replace his ailing heart.

De La Cruz lives in Nevada and is on the state’s Medicaid program. However, there are no transplant centers in Nevada.

De La Cruz has been trying to go to California under the Medicare Disability program, but he has been rejected twice and his next appeal hearing is a year away. Simply put, De La Cruz will not live that long.

So Reznor started selling value-added packages to Nine Inch Nails shows, like VIP offerings featuring meet & greets, photos, soundcheck access and backstage passes.

How much money did Reznor raise? According to a June 2 post on NIN.com, the band’s efforts raised more than $850,000 in just over two weeks.

Now Jane’s Addiction has taken an interest in De La Cruz’s plight. The band is offering its fans access to their regular, 10-minute pre-show warm up for those with a little extra money in their pockets.

From JanesAddiction.com:

“Before every show, we regularly warm up in an intimate style set-up backstage together. For $1,000, we’d like to offer 10 guests per show the opportunity to sit in us, hang out, and witness the JA preshow experience. In addition to the backstage hang and autograph signing, you will have the chance to watch our set from the side of the stage if you’d like.”

Tony Hawk is also helping out. The famed skateboarder has donated signed, limited edition skateboards to go along with the signed, limited edition Nine Inch Nails albums Reznor is selling to raise money for De La Cruz.

If De La Cruz’s problems funding a heart transplant already sound familiar it might because his biggest supporter isn’t Nine Inch Nails, Jane’s Addiction or even Tony Hawk. Leading the effort to provide De La Cruz with a transplant is his sister, CNN correspondent Veronica De La Cruz.

The reporter, along with life coach Tim Storey of Storey Dreams, formed The Lifegiver Project to help her brother obtain a transplant as well as raise the public’s consciousness regarding health insurance issues in America. Ms. De La Cruz has been sending out tweets describing her brother’s condition, and those 140-character messages have been compiled into larger postings at the organization’s Web site.

Click here for more information on Eric De La Cruz and The Lifegiver Project.

Click here for the Nine Inch Nails Web site.

Click here for the Jane’s Addiction Web site.

Click here for the Veronica De La Cruz official fan site.