"When no one wanted to listen," Gayla said later, "I strolled into the capitol, and I didn't stop until people pretty much hated me."
She had something else, too: about 10,000 court documents from the lawsuits in Libby, including the company's confidential memos.
She filed a complaint with the state about the old mine site, and a reporter from Seattle named Andrew Schneider heard about it. She handed him the documents.
On November 18, 1999, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran his story: "Uncivil Action: A Town Left to Die." It counted at least 192 dead. The federal Environmental Protection Agency came to Libby.
Not everyone was grateful. Some people in town made a bumper sticker: "Yes, I'm from Libby, Montana, and, no, I don't have asbestosis."
Then the government's numbers came in. From 1979 to 1998, deaths from asbestosis in Libby had run 40 to 80 times higher than expected.