CINCINNATI — One woman is turning the “golden ticket” from the Willy Wonka classic movie into a message of hope.
When Ali Connor was going through a divorce, she said that a book about second chances and a golden ticket she found in it helped turn things around.
“I hit rock bottom big time, like the basement of rock bottom, and I stayed in a state of total hopelessness and despair for about two months,” Connor said, “Discovering this, it just like woke something up in my mind saying if you have hope, that’s the first start for everything.”
On the back of the ticket are words of encouragement, and she felt she wasn’t the only one who needed to hear it. She started making her own golden tickets with that message on it and has been passing them out and reading them to people like Shawn Trammell.
“We all have a rock bottom,” Trammell said. “I’ve been there. I’m still there.”
The ticket was a reminder to him of how he’s getting through his own dark times.
“I worked 15 jobs in a day all that, and I still ain’t where I wanna be, but I’m not giving up hope, ’cause I know I’m gonna get there one day,” Trammell said.
It’s the reason Connor said she’s not giving up on handing out the golden tickets. She’s been putting them on cars and reading them to anyone who will listen.
“There’s a lot of bullies in school, and like from someone you don’t even know, I feel like getting that message, you just know that everything’s gonna be OK,” said Lucy Richard, Connor’s daughter.
Connor is already helping get the tickets into the schools.
“At your worst moment, if you could have hope, you have everything,” Connor said.
