It will be on a wing and a prayer that Katie Schmidt makes it to Barack Obama's inauguration. And, if all goes as planned, the kindness -- and dollar bills -- of strangers.
Schmidt, 24, wants 1,000 people to send her a square piece of paper with a message of hope written on it, plus one dollar.
She plans to fold the notes into 1,000 paper cranes, have them photographed next to national monuments and have them delivered to the White House.
The dollar bills would pay for her plane fare to Washington, D.C., she said in her Dec. 15 posting on Craigslist. She'll stay with a friend once she gets there.
"I don't have the means to go," said Schmidt, a 2006 Colorado College graduate whose part-time hours have just been cut and who helps out her diabetic parents. "But I'm one of those people who believe if you ask the universe for something, then you will receive it."
Schmidt hopes this idea works better than her last one -- singing Christmas carols on Denver's 16th Street Mall. She held a sign that read: "Carol for Obama -- singing all the way to Washington."
But after singing for three hours on a cold day in early December, she earned a total of $4.68.
"I guess they didn't like my carols," she said.
After talking to her friends, she hit on the idea of making the paper cranes.
"If Malia and Sasha (Obama's daughters) can open them up and read these messages to their father, it would be so great."
Schmidt was an enthusiastic Obama supporter during the campaign.
"I've never been so inspired by a political candidate before," she said. "I really thought, out of everyone, this is the person who needs to be in that job."
She said she made calls to Ohio voters during the primaries and canvassed door-to-door in Denver on Election Day.
On election night, she wept.
"It was so moving to see him and his family, and watch all those people who were so moved by him," she said.
Although she has signed up on U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette's Web site for tickets to the inauguration, Schmidt learned that she was not able to score one.
But she still desperately wants to be in Washington for the event.
"It's not about being able to see him or even hear him," she said. "It's being physically present there at that moment of history."
To help Schmidt reach her goal, send a square piece of paper with a message for President Barack Obama and $1 to Kathleen Schmidt, P.O. Box 9134, Denver, CO 80209.
(Tillie Fong is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colo.)
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