Help using TVs in Ditto

This question may not be specific to ditto, but here is a description of my problem:

I am creating an events page on my website, where different people can add their events. In my "event_page" template, I have a template variable "event_person" that is a drop down menu using an input like : person1==1||person2==2||. This allows me to link to the document ID of that person’s page on my site: <a href=[~[+id+]~]">Person’s Name</a> . My question is, how can I parse the "person1" part of this string, so i can show the Person’s Name in Ditto?

The easiest way I can think of is to use Ditto’s tagging system with the delimiter || and tagData set to your tv name.
Disclaimer: Did not test this.