Erin Brockovich
Erin Brockovich
“If you follow your heart if you listen to your gut, and if you extend your hand to help another, not for any agenda, but for the sake of humanity, you are going to find the truth.”
-Erin Brockovich
It’s not normal for a person who didn’t complete her studies to go on and make a humongous lawsuit against one of the biggest companies in the United States. Well, that’s the case of Erin Brockovich, she’s the perfect example that if one person is determined and sets a goal then they can achieve anything they desire.
Erin was born in Kansas in the year of 1960, she was the youngest of her four brothers and of a middle-class family who struggled financially. Her father studied industrial engineer and her mother was an experienced journalist. Erin was characterized as not being a good student in school, she briefly attended the Kansas State University but later she transferred to the Wade’s Fashion Merchandising College where she got her degree in the year of 1980.
She was married twice and gave birth to three children, two boys, and the youngest a little girl. After divorcing her first husband, Erin got into a severe car accident that required neck surgery, after that she hired a lawyer to represent her in her accident case, she won the case but received little money to support her family. The lawyer feeling sorry for Erin offered her a job at a lawyer’s firm.
A day when she was sorting different files, she stumbled upon documents that included blood samples, suspicious, Erin decided to indagate more in the files and found that it traced back to the California desert town of Hinkley. Erin found residues of hexavalent chromium in the water compression tanks of PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric) which caused a series of illnesses in the town’s population. An approximate of 600 residents of Hinkley hired the lawyer’s firm, Masry & Vititoe in 1993.
After making public all the information at the trial, it suggested that PG&E knew about these pollution present in the waters but tried to cover up the pollution. In 1996, the company needed to pay an amount of $333 million, the largest in USA history. Erin received a fee of 2.5 million for participating and helping to uncover the toxic waste. The huge quantity that these case got brought the attention of film producing Danny Devito and bought the rights to Erin Brockovich’s story in 1995.
The film titled “Erin Brockovich” starring Julia Roberts as Erin and Albert Finney as Maisey, the lawyer who helped Erin throughout the case. The movie was a commercial success earning more than $250 million in the box office, with critic’s praising Roberts’s performance and the accuracy the film holds. The movie received various nominations and Julia Roberts won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
After the film’s success, Erin took advantage of her fame, by the year of 2001 she published her first book “Take It from Me: Life’s a Struggle But You Can Win” which became a New York Time bestseller. She also published other series of book:
· Hot Water (2011)
· Rock Bottom (2011)
· Detoxing America (2015)
She also contributed to a documentary in 2012 for BBC called “Last Call at the Oasis”. As of now she is a current environmental activist and currently resides in Malibu with her current husband and continues to participate in creating consciousness to protect our environment.
She was consecrated as “an icon of the 20th century”.
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