How do I sort content in a view based on a referenced node?

Sorry if this topic is posted somewhere else, but I haven't found a solution yet.

I have created 3 types of content Company, Profile (using Content Profile) and Ticket Items.

The Company has a Location field.
When a user creates a profile they pick a Company that they work for. I use Node Reference for this. They can only have a relationship with one company.
The user can then create multiple Ticket Items.

There is a few things I want to be able to do.

1. I want to be able to create a list (using views) of users that displays their company and the address. (I know there are some solutions discussed here http://drupal.org/node/546742)

2. I want to be able to have that list sortable by zip code.

3. I want to be able to create a list of ticket items that can also be sortable by zip code.

Ideally, it would be nice if views could somehow identify the relationships of the three types of content and assign that value of the zip code to the content type being displayed.

Since I can't figure a way to pass the zip code from the company to both the profile and ticket item via views, I was thinking there may be a method to somehow pass the zip code or entire location (meaning company and location) to each node. For instance, when a user creates a profile, they select a company and the location is automatically filled in. It would then be nice to have the location on the ticket item populate based on the user that is creating it. However, I am still having trouble finding a method to achieve this. I thought about using Prepopulate but this is based on the url and not the CCK field used to reference the company.

Any help would be appreciated

Thank you,

Rich