 Debi
of anti-smoking ad fame is indeed a real person
Wednesday, January 10, 2001
By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
We referred to her as "Little Debi with a Hole in Her Throat" at our house
after my family first caught the apparition on a billboard on Elliott Avenue
West.
Black humor helps when something so jarring first hits you.
Soon the sweet-looking cupcake blonde shown exhaling a cigarette through the
stoma -- the surgical opening where her larynx had been -- was on more and
more billboards, on bus signs and on TV anti-smoking commercials all over
the state.
I had to know who she was. And the ad's sponsor -- the Washington State
Department of Health -- helped me find her.
Turns out Debi Austin of Canoga Park, Calif., isn't little. She weighs 350
pounds. And her courage in allowing the shocking outcome of her tobacco
addiction to be shoved in our faces is even bigger than that.
Of her size, Austin told me, "When I go to speak at high schools, I make
sure I step out from behind the podium. Then, especially to the girls, I say
that if they think smoking will help them stay slim, this is what three
packs a day for 30 years looks like on me."
There's a good chance some students here will soon see Debi for themselves.
Although the ad campaign is just getting started in Washington, state Health
Department Secretary Mary Selecky said children are surprisingly riveted by
Debi's image. So smoking prevention groups such as WATCH (Washington
Alliance for Tobacco Control and Children's Health) may invite Austin to
make appearances here.
Austin says she's willing to make the drive. Because of emphysema, she's
unable to fly.
She goes mainly to middle and high schools. Her throat and her voice --
which she aptly describes as sounding like Elmer Fudd on Thorazine -- scares
the smaller kids.
Of course, scaring kids -- not lecturing them but being a living worst-case
scenario -- is precisely the point. And Austin makes it by pulling no
punches.
At 51, she vividly remembers the day when, at age 13, she took her first
drag from a Camel non-filter she had stolen from her father. Despite hacking
her head off, Austin was hooked so fast and hard that even getting kicked
out of three high schools for smoking didn't deter her.
People are now grasping the addictive power of cigarettes. The money
Washington state won in the famous tobacco settlement is helping to spread
that word and pay for the Debi ads.
But Austin says people underestimate the allure of the ceremony involved in
smoking. The tamping, the different ways people open a pack, the lighting of
the fire and the choreography of hands and mouth.
That plus the nicotine kept Austin going despite warnings and inconvenience.
The manager of a large medical answering exchange, she made herself so
indispensable and generated so much revenue that, for years, her bosses
created a smoking room where she could work.
Not until 1992 -- the year she thought she had mumps -- was smoking banned
from her building. That same year she learned the lump was cancer and that
her voice box would have to go.
"What was I going to do?," Austin asked. "I had made a living all my life
with my mouth and my warped sense of humor."
She went to tell her boss, then panicked and crawled under his huge desk to
light up and hide. He reassured Austin they'd find a way. Buy a special
computer to help her communicate. Anything it took.
"And it hit me, here's this wonderful man who at the time was, himself,
dying of AIDS. And he was reassuring me."
She had the surgery but didn't stop smoking.
The first time Austin inhaled through the hole in her throat she had found a
dried-up cigarette in the bottom of an old backpack and stood on her back
porch, surgical bandages still on her neck, trying to light up in the wind.
Her mother had steam-cleaned her apartment and would have smelled smoke.
Austin remembers laughing, "What am I going to tell my surgeon if I get
tobacco in there (in the stoma)?" So she put gauze across the opening and
inhaled through that.
She was still smoking when her support group was contacted by the California
Department of Health. Others in the group smoked, too, despite having their
larynxes removed. But Austin was the only one who would admit it and agree
to tape a TV ad while inhaling.
Not until 1997, when her 4-year-old niece came to stay with her, did Austin
finally quit. "It took having this little girl in my life," Austin said. "I
couldn't lie to her. I needed to teach her that people who smoke have a
terrible problem."
In the time she has left -- she figures maybe 10 years -- Austin wants to
help other youths understand, too. Although she blames tobacco companies for
lying to her, she'd rather spend her time in schools than in court. "That
way I can take away more from the tobacco companies than I ever could with a
lawsuit," she said.
Still, it isn't easy for her to see her image plastered on screens and
signs. The first time Austin saw the billboard that is now in Seattle she
pulled the car over and sat there shaking. So, for strength, she wrote down
a favorite quote. "If you can't be a good influence, maybe you're a horrible
example."
"That's me," Austin said. "I'm the horrible example."
|
