Is it possible to display records based on custom criteria first before display others?

pansengtat

I have checked the docs and examples on DataTables being able to sort or order rows according to a data type or using custom values, but however the objective that I am trying to achieve is different.
What I am trying to accomplish is to display a set of rows according to a custom criteria first, before displaying other rows.
Let me show an example:

ID - AssignedPerson - RequestNum - Date

1 - Beck - ABC012 - 01/02/2013

2 - Erin - BCD321 - 03/06/2014

3 - Fiona - CDE234 - 04/07/2014

4 - Erin - DEF345 - 05/07/2014

Notice that if I were to perform sorting or ordering of columns, I can only go either by ascending/descending order, numeric or alphabetical only. In this example, if I sort by AssignedPerson, I only get Beck -Erin - Erin - Fiona.
But what happens if I wish to display results to be more like this instead:

2 - Erin - BCD321 - 03/06/2014

4 - Erin - DEF345 - 05/07/2014

1 - Beck - ABC012 - 01/02/2013

3 - Fiona - CDE234 - 04/07/2014

Notice that for column AssignedPerson, Erin having started with an E falls between B (Beck) and F (Fiona).
I believed that it has to do with the way the rows are presented inside the Editor JS file when the results are retrieved from Editor.php file. But how do I accomplish this?

I remembered seeing an example in the Editor docs that does something somewhat similar, but I think it's different ultimately.
Pay attention to the section on "drawCallback" here:

var table = $('#MyTable').DataTable( {
            dom: "Tfrtip",
            ajax: "php/MyEditor.php",
            columns: [
                { data: "PutWhatEverColumnsDataHere"}
            ],
            tableTools: {
                sRowSelect: "os",
                aButtons: [
                    {   sExtends:       "editor_create",
                        editor:         adder,
                        sButtonText:    "New Entry"
                    },
                    {   sExtends:       "editor_edit",   
                        editor:         editor,
                        sButtonText:    "Update Existing Entry"
                    }
                ]
            },
            "drawCallback": function ( settings ) {
                var api = this.api();
                var rows = api.rows( {page:'current'} ).nodes();
                var last = null;
     
                api.column(1, {page:'current'} ).data().each( function ( AssignedPerson, i ) {
                    if ( last !== AssignedPerson ) {
                        $(rows).eq( i ).before(
                            '<tr class="AssignedPerson"><td colspan="18">'+AssignedPerson+'</td></tr>'
                        );
    
                        last = AssignedPerson;
                    }
                } );
            },