She keeps her tiara and sash in a box in her closet. For Tiffany Ellison, a 36-year-old Folsom mother of four and the reigning Mrs. California, the pageant world doesn't revolve around the glitter or the glory.

Her main motivation is the chance to spread the word about the need for organ donation.

"That's definitely where my passion is," she says. "When I sign up people to be donors" – as a volunteer for Golden State Donor Services – "in my heart I believe I'm saving lives."

And when she competes in the Mrs. America contest in Tucson, Ariz., on Sept. 2, she plans to concentrate on that platform. Specifically, she'll think about her 10-year-old son, Connor, who has inspired her to follow her dreams.

Her journey to Mrs. America began with Connor, who's in love with football. At age 8, during the physical required before he could play with the Folsom Junior Bulldogs peewee team, his doctor discovered that Connor has an enlarged spleen.

The eventual diagnosis – congenital hepatic fibrosis, a potentially fatal liver disease – devastated his mother.

One day, Connor may require a liver transplant. But for now, he's healthy – so healthy that when Folsom Youth Football and Cheer organizers learned that he still dreams of being in a football uniform, they signed him up as a member, to practice but not play with the team. (And no tackling or hitting during drills!)

"There's no greater fear for a mother than facing this kind of diagnosis," says Ellison. "In the beginning, I was depressed and eating everything in sight. I gained 20 pounds.

"As a mother, I just wanted to fix my little boy. I wanted him better. I wanted him healthy, but now we have a new normal. It took me about a year to deal with all that.

"I sat down one day with Connor and said, 'You haven't cried. You haven't felt bad.' And he said, 'I just want my mother back.'

"That gave me permission to let go of my fear to a certain degree. I have absolutely no control over his vitality or that of any of my other kids. All I have control over is the kind of mother I am today."

She decided to be the kind of mom who learns from her son that goals are reachable. Hence, the pageants, a longtime dream of hers as well as a convenient larger platform from which to spread the word about organ donations.

She started working out and lost the weight she'd gained.

And she and her family became volunteers with Golden State Donor Services because, as Ellison says, "we can't fix Connor, but we can help other people."

According to Golden State's Tracy Bryan, almost 20,000 Californians – and 100,000 people across the country – await the organ transplants needed to save their lives.

Like Connor, who fortunately is too healthy to be on the waiting list right now, 3,600 Californians need a new liver. More than 200 of them are younger than 18.

If statistics hold true, one-third of these people will die before a suitable organ becomes available, even though signing up for the donor registry merely requires a few clicks on the computer. (Visit www.donatelifecalifornia.org for more information.)

Are we finally managing to grow beyond the myths and weird squeamishness surrounding organ donation? Maybe so. More than 3.5 million Californians have already joined the donor registry.

Even though Tiffany Ellison's pageant platform is deadly serious business, she occasionally pulls her tiara out of the closet and tries it on, dreaming of the Mrs.M America crown.

"I can't help it," she says.

But her path isn't about the tiara – not really – and it never has been.

Call the Bee's Anita Creamer at (916) 321-1136.