OREM — Lindsay who?
While Lindsay Lohan, the actress and singer who is usually mobbed by photographers wherever she goes, is reportedly rehabbing in the mountains just a few minutes from the Provo-Orem area, folks here seem much more preoccupied with back-to-school issues and the fate of six trapped coal miners in Emery County.
True, Lohan did create a buzz when she got a spray-on tan at a shop in Orem — but the area is hardly swarming with paparazzi.
Lohan is said to have checked into Utah's exclusive Cirque Lodge drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation center about the same time six miners became trapped in the Crandall Canyon Mine, about 1 1/2 hours from Utah Valley.
Television and newspaper reporters from around the world have whizzed past Utah County toward Huntington, near the mine, leaving Lohan free to travel about the valley somewhat unnoticed.
"Perhaps it's the mountain air or the fact that she's away from Hollywood friends," OK! Weekly quoted an unidentified friend of Lohan as saying. "Whatever the reason, this time rehab seems to be working."
Photos published in the gossip magazine show the "Mean Girls" star meditating and reading the Alcoholics Anonymous "Big Book."
The Deseret Morning News couldn't independently verify the authenticity of the photos published in OK! Magazine's Sept. 3 edition.
One of the photos looks heavily edited, with bizarre, unnatural lighting.
"They are paparazzi shots," Lohan's publicist, Leslie Sloane, said in an e-mail to the Morning News.
The accompanying story in OK! states that Lohan has participated in Cirque Lodge's work-treatment program in which patients work at a Smith's Food & Drug and donate salaries to charity.
"There's no truth to that," said Marsha Gilford, a spokeswoman for Smith's. "It's not Lindsay Lohan that has been in a Smith's store bagging groceries."
Gilford said that the Orem Smith's store has been inundated with phone calls from people wanting to see Lohan, and Gilford hopes the public realizes Lohan is not there.
A couple weeks ago, Lohan got a spray-on tan at Beaches Tanning salon on 800 North in Orem, then headed next door to Gold's Gym for a workout, according to tmz.com.
The Cirque Lodge has campuses in Provo Canyon on a private road above Sundance ski resort and in an Orem business park that formerly was the Osmond television studio.
Treatment costs upwards of $30,000 a month. The private facility does not accept insurance, Medicare or Medicaid.
The Cirque Lodge's long-standing policy is not to reveal who may or may not be a patient at the facility.
"I can assure you no one has been authorized to take any photographs of anybody at the Cirque Lodge," said the treatment center's director, Gary Fisher, who had not seen the OK! photos.
On Thursday, Lohan agreed to a plea deal on drunken driving and cocaine charges in which she will spend one day in jail, serve 10 days of community service, spend 36 months on probation and complete a drug-treatment program.
Also last week, Lohan's estranged parents reached a divorce settlement.
E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com