Locate A Datagrid Cell By Color Of Background?

Is there a way to locate a cell by back color? I have a datagrid, that will populate names, on some of the cells. Some of the cells will be empty.

I have it so if there is a name in the cell, the background color will change to blue. I also can look for a specific value, and locate the value that way, and then change the color the cell or whatever.

The problem is that I have 4 different status for a cell with the same name. So for example, "Joe" name will show up in the grid. That cell background will turn blue.

The next status is "Check-In". So I can return the value "Joe" from my database with a store procedure, and look for that value of "Joe" again, and change the color to red to show he is checked in. The other 2 status I have is In Session, Session over. The problem is what if there is more than 1 "Joe"?

I think the best way is using the datagrids CellPaintings. But I can't find any other value beside a value to locate a cell on that procedure. So I thought if there is a way I can find a cell by the e.value = "Joe" and cell.backcolor = color.blue, than I can avoid having problems with multiples names.

I would be open to any other ideas, or a better way of doing this. Oh, is there a way to use tags for a cell value? I thought that might be a way was well.