text: Whitestone also served as an executive member on the President's Committee on Employment of People Disabilities. She has written four
  books.
  After Miss America
  Since her Miss America win, Whitestone has completed her studies at Jacksonville State University and continued to promote awareness of Deaf issues. She has also spoken out in detail about her close relationship with God, one that she has had ever since she rediscovered church as a teenager. She wrote about her life experiences in her third book, Let God Surprise You: Trust God with Your Dreams.
  A volunteer for Republican causes, she spoke at the party's National Conventions of 1996 and 2000, for GOP presidential nominees Bob Dole and George W. Bush.
  In 2002, Whitestone elected to have a cochlear implant operation in order to hear to an extent in her right ear, the hearing of which she had lost at 18 months. It was implanted by Dr. John Niparko on August 6 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and activated on September 19. She said the primary motivation for electing the surgery was an incident when she did not hear her son's cries for help. She said that she had not regretted her decision, thanking her family for supporting her.