I was born in 1963 in California. Through the next 18 years of my life we moved so much that I attended 24 elementary schools, 3 juniors highs during my 7th grade year and finally, once my mother divorced my biological father, we stopped and I attended one high school.
In August of 1981, shortly after my high school graduation, I underwent open heart surgery under the skilled and inspired hands of Elder Russell M. Nelson, who was just Dr. Nelson to me then. What they thought was wrong and what was really wrong were two entirely different things. Fortunately for me, Dr. Nelson had seen this condition once before, 30 years prior, and he knew precisely what to do. He prayed and his hands were guided as he changed the course of the surgery in midstream.
In October of 1981, I entered Ricks College. After finishing there I moved on to Brigham Young University where the most important thing that happened to me was the meeting of my husband, Alvin.
After college I spent an inordinate amount of time learning to write screenplays, wrote 6 screenplays and tried to sell them, launching my own production company and attempting to procure funding. This was not a successful venture, no matter how close I came with Disney, Merv Griffin's company, etc. I believed, and worked hard for many years, that I would be successful, but it was never meant to be.
April 23rd of 1993 I appeared on The Phil Donahue Show in defense of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was an amazing experience which sent me on a two-plus year adventure of speaking at churches, firesides, youth conferences, etc. Oddly, it also brought Alvin back into my life.
May 4th of 1995, I was sealed to Alvin in the Bountiful Temple for time and all eternity. Over the course of the next 9 years I suffered 8 miscarriages and Alvin was diagnosed with end stage renal failure. We underwent drastic changes in employment, I continued to try procuring funding for my movies and we kept powering through, loving each other more every day.
In 2003 I decided to try my hand at writing a book. I submitted the first three chapters to a local publisher and was asked to finish it and resubmit, which I did. The changes which were ultimately asked of me seemed to take an exciting story and make it very bland. I decided to not go with that company and in early 2004, I attended a writers conference and found my first publisher.
December 1st of 2004 saw the release of my first book Out of the Shadows...Into the Light. It enjoyed moderate success in my opinion. Enough so that my publisher interrupted the writing of the sequel to that book to ask me to write a book on BYU's National Championship Football Team, 13 and 0: Reflections of Champions, which was released in August of 2005. Along about that time, I was approached by another author about co-writing a book called Forged in the Refiner's Fire, which we released February 1, 2006. The exact same day my husband was admitted to the hospital for a terrifying 6 weeks as we battled to save his life.
Alvin survived and we began the process of getting him on the transplant list. In and out of the hospital for the next couple of years, we lost my brother-in-law to a drunk driver the following June and my father to signet ring adenocarcenoma, March 8th, of 2008.
Between medical bills and trying to survive, I stopped writing and simply put it aside for a calmer time. That time never came. And two to three years went by before I began writing again, albeit very slowly and not very well. I deleted almost everything I wrote because it did not meet the standards I had for myself.
Alvin received a kidney transplant on April 15th of 2008, thankfully we'd already paid our income taxes for that year. The transplant went well and we enjoyed a time of good health for my husband.
In May of 2009 I launched Valor Publishing Group and worked hard with a small group of people to make it successful. We were hit hard, from a variety of areas, before we ever got off the ground, but have managed to survive and are seeing the company on the upswing, finally. It has taken untold hours and unimaginable hard work, but the company has survived and is doing better every day.
In the meantime, in April of that same year, I spoke at my first tea party. I became so involved in the preservation of this great nation that over the course of the last two years I've somehow become important to the political scene in more than one state, especially in my own. I believe it was important to stand up for what I believed in and to speak the truth, I still believe that today. What followed was completely unexpected.
May 31st of 2010, my husband was admitted to ICU, in full rejection, 5 infections in his lungs and in a medically induced coma. All through June he remained in the hospital until he finally emerged healthy again. Although back on dialysis and the transplant list, he is relatively strong and doing well. I do love and adore that man and pray daily for his health and good life. He deserves it!
In the early summer of 2010, I was approached by a producer to host a local television show, which evolved into The Candace Salima Show in a matter of weeks. We hit snags pretty quickly but have worked through them and hope to launch the show in the next month or so in our local market.
In the meantime, a friend approached me a month ago and asked if I would cover for a friend of hers on his radio show Buy Back America on KTALK AM 630. His mother had just died and he needed someone to cover for him. I agreed to cover two days; and within a week I was the permanent co-host of Buy Back America with Tim Aalders, Monday through Friday from Noon to 3:00 p.m. every day.
Now, we are making the move to 10:00 a.m. which provides us a better opportunity for nationwide syndication. All in all, it is a stunning turn of events considering the path which brought me here. I am still writing, still publishing, still doing the weekly television show and now doing talk radio five days a week.
Through it all, and in the days, weeks, months and years to come, I am determined to remember:
- the eternities are more important than now
- family is everything
- to represent my God in everything I do and say
- the divine purposes of America
- and to never betray the values, principles, practices and precepts I hold so dear
What a journey it has been, and I believe there is quite a journey yet to embark on. It will be an interesting ride, without question.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved by Candace E. Salima.
