She signed everything in pink ink.
Every letter. Every card. Every handwritten note to a client, an employee, a friend. Not because it was a gimmick — because it was entirely, unmistakably her.
She Started With Almost Nothing
Connie grew up on Petticoat Lane in Vancouver, Washington — a name that sounds like a fairy tale and felt like one. Her father taught her to declare what you want as if it already belongs to you. Her mother filled their home with music, warmth, and the kind of hospitality that made strangers feel like family. Her neighbor, Esther Hatch, gave her a golden ruler for her tenth birthday and explained how you live by the Golden Rule all your life.
These weren't small gifts. They became the architecture of her courage.
"The banker told me he didn't loan to women-owned businesses. I thanked him, pushed in my chair, and left."
— Connie Worrell-DrulinerThe Day She Drove to a Mountain
When a client walked out in the night leaving her to cover hundreds of thousands in payroll — and her banker, accountant, and attorney all told her to close her doors — Connie didn't storm out. She drove west. Toward Mount Bachelor. Alone. In a business suit and heels. Literally looking for divine intervention.
She bought a lift ticket, rode the chairlift to the top, and prayed all the way up and all the way down. At the bottom, Bend's most powerful businessman was standing in the parking lot. He didn't know why she was there. He just said: "Gee, I'm so glad I ran into you. We have several positions we need filled. Call me Monday."
She still has that lift ticket. She kept her doors open. She built her business for 43 more years.
She Built It Anyway
Without the loan. Without permission. Without a roadmap. Connie ran her Express Employment franchise in Bend, Oregon for 43 years — raising five children while running the business, serving on over 40 community boards, surviving recessions, betrayals, the loss of a husband, a pandemic, and every January when the slate wiped clean and she had to start again.
She almost quit. Not the business. Everything. She didn't.
Love, Loss, and a Dove on the Wire
Connie has loved deeply and lost deeply. Her husband Bill — the superintendent she helped hire, the man who kissed her on a doorstep and made her hear bells — died of lung cancer after 13 years of rare, uncommon partnership. Before he died, he sat her down and gave her permission to live again.
After he was gone, a dove appeared on the wire outside her home every morning where two had always been before. It came back whenever she faced hard decisions. The morning she decided to say yes to Jerry — the CPA she had once helped find a job, who had been Bill's biology student decades before — the dove landed on her windowsill.
She and Jerry will celebrate their 20th anniversary soon. Moving forward is not betrayal when love itself told you to keep living.
The Night the Room Stood Up
Years into her career, at an event honoring her work, someone asked everyone whose life Connie had touched to stand up.
Most of the room rose.
She had no idea. That's the thing about doing the work with your head down and your heart in.
Why Pink Pen Exists
Connie signed every letter in pink because it was personal. Because it said: this came from me, not from a form, not from a template. A pink pen in a world of black-and-white business correspondence was a quiet act of defiance and warmth at the same time.
Pink Pen is built on that same idea. These are the stories that don't always get told. Women who built something real, the hard way. Every Thursday, one story. One lesson. One reason to keep going.
Get her story every Thursday.
Pink Pen Letters — free, weekly, straight from the desk of someone who lived it.
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