Gayla's mother, Margaret, had spent years going in and out of the hospital with pneumonia. In 1985, doctors finally gave it a name: asbestosis.
She had never worked at the mine. She had washed her husband's clothes.
She was the first miner's wife in Libby to be diagnosed. She died in 1996.
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At the end, Gayla said, her mother was getting about as much oxygen as you would give a newborn.
Gayla sued. In 1998, a jury awarded her $250,000 for her mother's death. "I just needed a jury to say they killed her," she said.
It didn't even make the local paper.