JQuery :: Color Based On Contents Of Table Data

I have a table of data brought in through lift and in it is a status column. I am wondering if there is an easy way to color a row based on the contents of that column. Any status of broken was red, edited was yellow and finalized was green. It seems like I could write a widget for doing this, but I don't know how it would work and have little experience with creating my own widgets.

Here is the initialization which includes functions for mouseover color changes.
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
// Adds "over" class to rows on mouseover
$(".tablesorter tr").mouseover(function(){
$(this).addClass("rowHover");
});
// Removes "over" class from rows on mouseout
$(".tablesorter tr").mouseout(function(){
$(this).removeClass("rowHover");
});
$('.tablesorter selectThisRow').click(function() {
$(this).parent('tr').addClass('selected');
});
$("#claims").tablesorter({
sortList:[[4,0],[6,0]],
widgets: ['zebra'],
headers: {
0: { sorter: false },
1: { sorter: false },
2: { sorter: false },
3: { sorter: false },
5: { sorter: false },
7: { sorter: false },
8: { sorter: false }
}})
.tablesorterPager({container: $("#pager")});
});
</script>

I'm working with scala and lift as well so I'm bringing in the table data from a database when the page loads. Whether a widget is how to make the colors adjust, or creating more JS functions for doing it.