Inspiring story could win a TV spot

Ever since she was a child, Kristal Zacharias has had trouble with math.

The Irvine resident, now 44, said she didn’t let that get in the way of her dream of attending college.

After high school, she enrolled in a community college in San Luis Obispo, where she lived at the time, and met a doctor who informed her of the cause of her problems — dyscalculia, a brain disorder that causes a severe difficulty in making arithmetical calculations.

“I felt there was an answer that finally said I wasn’t stupid,” she said. “I’m actually very intelligent. When you’re getting failing grades, you don’t feel like a success. You don’t feel appreciated, and teachers don’t understand. The diagnosis was a breaking point for me.”

After learning about her disability, she began applying new learned techniques, like color coding, to help her in her math classes. She was eventually able to transfer to and graduate from Cal State Chico with a journalism degree in 1995, making her the first college graduate in her family.

Zacharias said learning about her disability was her “aha moment.”

She shared her story through a national advertising campaign for Mutual of Omaha in July and has been selected to be in the top 20 contestants out of nearly 1,000 people who participated nationwide. Judges will whittle that number down to 10, and then the public will vote for the winner, who will do a commercial spot for the Nebraska-based insurance company.

For the past six years, Mutual of Omaha has traveled across the country to record people telling stories of when they reached an epiphany. Since launching the Aha Moment Tour, the company has conducted more than 5,000 one- to three-minute interviews, producer Jessica Henry said in an interview in July. A different person will be spotlighted in a commercial each summer as the nationwide search begins anew each year.

“The purpose is to create and gather inspiring stories from across the country,” Henry said. “It’s really neat to allow people to share the moments that changed their lives and have those stories inspire others. We want to uncover the powerful, everyday stories that are in our backyards.”

Irvine was the first stop on this year’s Aha Moment Tour. Zacharias and other locals shared their stories with a production crew in an airstream trailer at Irvine Spectrum Center.

Mutual of Omaha expects to announce its top 10 contestants next week and its first-place winner later this year. Voters can go online to facebook.com/mutualofomaha after Oct. 5 and vote for the person they want to win.

Zacharias said she is hopeful about winning the commercial spot but is more excited to share her story and spread awareness about her disability.

“I would hope to inspire people, and I’d also like to shed light on dyscalculia,” she said. “The more educators and people are informed about dyscalculia, there will be a lot more kids that will be able to go to college, graduate and won’t feel so frustrated.”