I-Team Extras: Secrets in the Soil
May 21, 2008 12:00 am US/Eastern
Secrets in the Soil: Reunion
Two long lost, best friends, reunite in a fight for their lives
FT. LAUDERDALE (CBS4) ―
For months, CBS4's Chief Investigative Reporter Michele Gillen has been working to unravel the mystery of why so many people in one Fort Lauderdale neighborhood fear they may be ill because of potential exposure to some of the most toxic chemicals in the world.
Arsenic, Lead, and Dioxin were found in the soil beneath a community park, school and right-a-ways crisscrossing the Durrs section of Fort Lauderdale. Ash from a city trash incinerator sat just next door to the elementary school. It had rained down in what some described as a snowstorm of ash. For decades children played at the park, but none of them or their parents knew about what has emerged to be secrets in the soil.
The CBS4 I-Team continued its investigation into what's in the dirt beneath the community, in the trees above it, and in the homes that line it.
They look like ordinary mangos. Aimlessly tethered to wind swept branches of a majestic tree that crowns a corner of Mickey Hinton's property.
With deep furrows of concern lining his forehead, Hinton shakes his head in disbelief recalling the phone call his wife received from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection asking for permission to take some of the mangos and examine them.
"Yes, they called us and said they wanted to test the mangos on the tree," said Hinton, who is President of the Durrs Homeowners Association.
For decades mangos have hovered over his head and homestead and fed countless children in the neighborhood, including his own. But now, he wonders if the fruit might hold a key to why so many of his neighbors and loved ones are sick.
Friends and family that grew up in a neighborhood now known to have been built upon soil peppered with dioxin, arsenic and lead. Perhaps the fruit could help unlock a mystery so dear to his heart. Might the mangos hold a clue as to why his eldest daughter Gail, who just turned 50 years old, is in a fight for her life? She is now trying to stave off cancer for a third time.
" I ate those mangos all the time, everyone did," Gail Martin tells CBS-4 Chief Investigative Reporter Michele Gillen. "I mean, there cannot be a child in that neighborhood that did not eat a mango."
It is five months since Martin and Gillen first met on the eve of Martin's surgery to have her uterus and fallopian tubes removed because of a rare cancer threatening her life. She had recently recovered from a bi-lateral mastectomy and according to doctors reports, her cancer was not genetic and is suspected to be linked to something she was exposed to growing up - either in the air, soil, or food she ate.
Sitting together in the same kitchen where they first met, Gail now has lost all her hair. She is in the midst of chemotherapy and extreme rounds of radiation. Each time, she needs an injection of a medicine that is intended to boost white blood cells. But it is a shot that Hinton said, is the cruelest of all.
" It caused my bone marrow to expand causing what I define as unspeakable pain for four days. I mean, waking up in the middle of the night, just screaming in pain, not really being able to take anything to alleviate the pain. Just waiting out those days for the pain and the bone marrow to shrink back. I define it (the pain) as unspeakable," she shared.
Martin continues to catalogue her story with Gillen in the hopes that others like her might come forward and be counted. The Gillen investigation led her to one of Martin's best childhood friends, now back living just minutes from Martin's childhood home and across the street from the park they once lovingly played in together.
Brenda Hankerson opens the door with a smile, and like Martin, she too does not have any hair on her head.
"Brenda and I did everything together at the park" said Martin who continued "it's really chilling to me to know that someone else is fighting a similar fight, and for us to have grown up together and to have played the same place to have breathed the same air."
Like Martin, Hankerson attended Lincoln Park Elementary School and from kindergarten on up played in the park next door. A park that decades later had to have all of its topsoil dug up, replaced and the ground capped because of the contaminants found in it.
Hankerson said she moved back to the neighborhood and her mother's house because she became too ill to take care of herself.
Turning 47 years old today, Hankerson has survived 16 brain surgeries. The pressure in her brain so high it is pressing on her optic nerve. "It's making me go blind', Hankerson told Michele.
As she approaches this latest birthday, Hankerson methodically explains that she mysteriously suffered a life and legacy of disease including multiple breast tumors and colon operations.
Most tragically she said, " I was 28 when I had a total hysterectomy . I don't have any children and I will never be able to have any children."
While Martin said she feels so blessed to have a child, a son now 26 years old, she knows what it is like to have all of ones female organs surgically removed. Following the discovery of breast cancer she had bi-lateral mastectomy. Just as she was attempting to emotionally recover, a cancerous tumor was then detected in her uterus, which along with her other reproductive organs, had to be removed. She described herself to Gillen, "as a walking shell."
The I-Team investigation reveals that since the confirmation of concerns over contaminates in Durrs, no one in state, county or city government has conducted a health survey to document how many Durrs residents, current or former, are sick and whether there are any similarities and potential links to the chemical exposure.
Louise Caro, is an environmental lawyer suing the City of Fort Lauderdale on behalf of some 200 residents, for negligence in handling what she calls the contamination of Durrs and abandonment of these citizens. She represents Martin and just last week met with Hankerson for the first time.
" [Gail and Brenda] may be the extreme example but there are so many people with tumors, reproductive problems, breast cancers, breast tumors, it's tragedy.
Gillen asked Hankerson about her thoughts on why no one from the State or City has ever questioned her or Martin or their neighbors about their conditions.
"It's not even being documented," said Hankerson left asking "Why? They don't care because we are black over here. What is it?"
When Martin discovered that Gillen had visited a now ailing Hankerson back in their old neighborhood, she was determined to visit her friend, who she had not seen or spoken to in 30 years. Just this Monday, following a morning of radiation, Gail boarded a tri-rail train for Fort Lauderdale. Her sister picked her up and they drove to Brenda's with palpable anticipation.
At Hankerson's front door, Gail wearing a navy baseball hat atop her baldhead could not resist a grin and giggle reminiscent of their innocent years together in kindergarten and elementary school.
"Look at you!" an estatic Martin gasped in happiness, as she entered Hankerson's mother's home taking in her friends wide smile, illuminating a beautiful face that shown beneath a totally bald and shiny head.
The two women collapsed into each other's arms with a long embrace of joy.
Martin shared with Hankerson that she just marked a treasured milestone. As she told Gillen, "I am proud to say that I am still here after 50 years, and I'm happy to be here and I just feel that God has put me here and let me stay here even though he's taking me through some difficult battles but I do believe that he has me here so that I can make a difference."
Hankerson emerges from her bedroom with a surprise gift for Martin. A handsome ivy green scarf that elicits glee from Martin. " Teach me" Martin implores her childhood friend, who tenderly wraps the scarf around Martin's baldhead, lacing and knotting it in a regal silhouette.
" We are overcomers" Hankerson exudes as both women fall into each other, hugging as best friends, melding into one force of strength and compassion.
"We are not going to let it go away, because there's too many people's lives that have been impacted by this, there's too many lives that need to be saved," said Martin. "The word needs to be out, because maybe there's somebody out there that will go and get some type of testing or do something that can maybe change the outcome of their life and that they wont have to fight this fight that Brenda and I have to fight"
Given the State of Florida's interest in testing mangos from Hinton's property, CBS4 brought a mango from the tree on the Martin property to a South Florida laboratory to be tested for heavy metals. We await the results.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
I-Team Extras: Secrets in the Soil
