It was a complete shock to the entire family when Theresa Garcia learned that her coughing fits were the result of a rare cancer that commonly affects miners and construction workers.
The 53-year-old from Chicago, Illinois, had worked in offices and spent most of her free time at home raising her six children.
It wasn’t until they started seeing news stories linking Johnson & Johnson talc to tumor formation that things started to make sense.
García has always used talcum powder, and from a very young age she would apply it after showering because she liked the smell and wanted to avoid sweating. She also covered her children with it from head to toe, as the photographs reveal, to help them stay dry.
The mother was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, a cancer that grows in the lining of the lungs and is caused by repeated exposure to asbestos, a now-banned, highly toxic mineral that used to be present in building materials.
Theresa Garcia, 53, is pictured above at a family meal. She died in July 2020, just six months after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, a fast-moving cancer.
Ms. Garcia is pictured above in family photos displayed in court. Her daughter Stephanie said Ms. Garcia was “family-oriented” and a mother first and foremost.
Describing her mother’s story for the first time, her daughter Stephanie Salcedo told DailyMail.com that Ms Garcia was very family-oriented and was always looking for ways to help others.
“Everything she did was for someone else,” her daughter said, “so whether that meant being active and playing volleyball, hosting cookouts or making and customizing T-shirts for us, she did it; it was for the happiness of her family.”
‘I remember during Halloween she would make personalized candy bags for the grandkids and cousins, and she was always willing to volunteer to help with a school project.’
After suffering from a mysterious cough that “just didn’t sound right” for months, Ms Garcia was diagnosed with cancer affecting the lining of her lungs in January 2020.
Known as pleural mesothelioma, it was commonly diagnosed among miners and builders, causing around 3,000 cases each year.
Products containing asbestos — which causes cancer — were banned in 1989, and cases in the United States have since fallen to fewer than 2,000 a year.
After the link became known, Ms. Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit against J&J. — and wonreceiving 45 million dollars.
But Ms Garcia did not live to see the verdict, dying in July 2020, just seven months after being diagnosed with cancer.
She was engaged at the time and was planning to have her dream wedding later that year.
The first warning sign the family had that something was wrong was when she began to suffer from a very bad cough that would not go away.
‘It would have been Christmas 2019, we were at her house and she kept coughing and coughing. She didn’t look sick, but the sound of her cough wasn’t right.
‘It was like a painful, raspy sound, like it wasn’t normal, it actually sounded like it was coming from his lungs, and not like someone clearing their throat.
The family photo above shows a bottle of talcum powder placed in the background.
‘I remember one of us asking her, ‘Mom, you need to get that cough checked out.’
“And she said, ‘I know I’ve had this cough forever. It’s not going to go away.'”
“But she said she thought it was like a common cold or cough, which was hard to get rid of.”
The photos above show the amount of powder Mrs. Garcia used. Her children can be seen covered in it from head to toe.
The following month, Garcia suffered a coughing fit while driving home from his job at an executive postal service. It was so bad that he had trouble breathing, so he had to go to the emergency room.
Studies have shown that the mineral talc it is made from could be… contaminated with asbestoswhich could be aerosolized when using the powder.
Asbestos fibers can be inhaled into the lungs, where they become trapped and do not break down, irritating the lining of the organ and eventually causing cancer.
By mid-January 2020, Ms. Garcia had been diagnosed with an advanced form of pleural mesothelioma, which was effectively a death sentence.
According to Penn Medicine, patients with this type of cancer typically survive only four to 18 months after diagnosis. Statistics show that only 12 percent of patients survive five years after the disease is detected.
Later that year, she became one of 54,000 people who filed lawsuits against Johnson and Johnson, accusing the company of causing a multitude of cancers, including ovarian cancer, as well as other diseases.
After her diagnosis, Ms. Garcia initially sought surgery to remove the lining of her lungs and remove the cancer.
Ms. Garcia is pictured above in the hospital during her seven-month battle with cancer.
A date was scheduled, but when the day of surgery arrived and he had a scan, he was told that his condition was inoperable and the surgery was cancelled.
She was then put on chemotherapy and went through four rounds of treatment.
But this took a heavy toll on her body, leaving her in constant pain and barely able to get out of bed, leading doctors to recommend palliative care.
Died on July 27, 2020.
Describing the battle her mother had to fight, Salcedo told DailyMail.com: “It was devastating to see my mother go through that and be in excruciating pain. She was basically dying before our eyes.
‘But even then, she cared about making other people feel comfortable and happy – she was a mother first and foremost and she was concerned about how we felt, even though she was the one who was hurting and suffering.
‘You could see it in her face and hear it in her voice how much pain she was in, but she kept saying, ‘I’m okay, I’m going to be okay,’ and she cared about us.’
Pleural mesothelioma is a slow-growing cancer that takes approximately two decades to form after exposure to asbestos.
It may not produce any symptoms in the early stages, before causing warning signs such as persistent cough, shortness of breath and chest pain.
It is difficult to treat because the cancer tends to be diagnosed only when it has already spread to other areas of the body and first affects the lining of the lungs, which are difficult to operate on.
Mrs. Garcia is pictured above in a family photo.
And it is shown again in another family photo taken during the Christmas period.
Other family members are now also worried that they too may develop the same cancer after using Johnson & Johnson products.
Ms Salcedo said: ‘It’s a concern that’s always on our minds, of course, and it was something that worried my mother when she started her trial.
“But for now, fortunately, we are all healthy and we hope it stays that way.”
It was during the early days of her illness that the family commissioned Texas-based attorneys at Dean Omar Branham Shirley to fight Ms. Garcia’s case.
The pharmaceutical company fought them hard in court, using every argument it could find to prove that its powder had not caused the disease.
Ms. Salcedo explained how they even reached out to Ms. Garcia’s first husband and family friends to find an alternative to asbestos exposure.
In court, they even went so far as to suggest that the family had been buying a counterfeit version of their product at the local grocery store.
But the jury ultimately sided with the family, although payment has yet to be received and lawyers say they may still appeal the ruling.
Ms Salcedo said: ‘I feel like we did this for her and I wish she was here to have experienced it.
“All along I thought that maybe she could rest in peace now. She always asked us to continue with her case if anything happened to her.”
Ms. Garcia was born in Chicago, the fifth of eight children, and grew up sharing a single room with her five sisters.
She married her first husband in the 1980s, with whom she had six children (with Johnson and Johnson powder being a mainstay in the family home) before the couple divorced in the 2010s.
She then met her partner Carlos at the same postal center where she worked, although they had known each other since childhood.
At the same time, when her children moved out, she also found herself being a grandmother to a group of about 13 grandchildren.
Ms Garcia kept quiet about the engagement after Charles proposed on Christmas Eve, waiting until family arrived and one of them saw a ring on her finger.
Her first question to the children when they found out was, “Do you mind?”
J&J is now set to make one of the largest payouts in history over claims its talc caused cancer and other ailments, after offering a $6.5 billion settlement to those who filed lawsuits against the company.
Early reports suggest that more than 75 percent of plaintiffs voted in favor of the settlement, which was the necessary threshold.