The movie Ordinary Angels (2024) is a touching tale about a woman rediscovering her purpose in life after meeting a widowed father supporting his two daughters. His youngest has a critical illness and is waiting on a liver transplant. When finding this out, she assembles the entire community to help.

This inspiring story is based on a real person named Sharon Stevens Evans. She is a hairdresser who had lost her faith and felt hopeless until she met the family who changed her life just as she changed theirs.

She rallied her entire community in Louisville, Kentucky to save Michelle Schmitt, the toddler who urgently needed a liver transplant. Both of Ed Schmitt's daughters had congenital liver disease and needed livers to survive. The older daughter, Ashley, received a transplant but three years later, Michelle was still waiting for hers. Due to both his children having critical illnesses, Ed was drowning in medical debt. This is when Sharon found them through the newspaper. She wasted no time and started a fundraiser to help Michelle.

When a donor liver was finally available for Michelle, Louisville just had a significant snowstorm, shutting the entire city down. That's when Sharon jumped into action again and started calling radio stations to rally the community together to help.

They all showed up to a church with shovels and paved away enough space for a helicopter to take Michelle to the hospital to receive her new liver. The operation was a success and she lived until she was 30 years old, when she suffered a fatal stomach aneurysm in 2021. Michelle graduated from Spalding University and dedicated her life to helping children through the medical field.

Sharon wrote a memoir about everything that happened called Ordinary Angels, published in September 2023 by Encourage Publishing. The movie rights were immediately purchased and the film, starring Hilary Swank as Sharon, released in 2024.

Sharon has been involved in the promotion of the movie and has spoken positively about it. It's a remarkable story about a true experience that allowed Sharon to find her spark for life again. ~Mackenzie Heidrick