It was a complete shock to the whole family when Theresa Garcia learned her coughing fits were the result of a rare cancer normally suffered by miners and construction workers.
The 53-year-old from Chicago, Illinois, had worked in offices and spent most of her down time at home raising her six children.
It wasn’t until the family started seeing news coverage linking Johnson and Johnson‘s talcum powder to the formation of tumors that things started to make sense.
Ms Garcia was a lifelong user of talc, lathering it on from a young age after showers because she liked the smell and wanted to avoid perspiration. She also covered her children in it from head to toe, as pictures reveal, to help keep them dry.
The mother was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, 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 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 the fast-moving cancer mesothelioma
Ms Garcia is pictured above in family photos shown in court. Her daughter Stephanie said Ms Garcia was ‘family-orientated’ 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-orientated and always on the lookout for ways to help others.
‘Everything she did was for someone else,’ her daughter said, ‘so if that meant being active and playing volleyball, hosting cook-outs or making and customizing t-shirts for us, she did it — it was for the happiness of her family’.
‘I remember that during Halloween she would make personalized trick-or-treat bags for the grandkids and cousins, and was always on hand 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 the lungs in January 2020.
Known as pleural mesothelioma, it was commonly diagnosed among miners and builders — causing about 3,000 cases every year.
Asbestos-laced products — behind the cancers — were banned in 1989, with cases in the US since plummeting to less than 2,000 per year.
After learning of the link, Ms Garcia’s family launched a court case against J&J — and won, being awarded $45million.
But Ms Garcia didn’t live to see the verdict passed, as she died in July 2020 — just seven months after being diagnosed with the cancer.
She was engaged at the time and had been planning to have her dream wedding that same year.
The first warning sign the family had that something was amiss was when she started to suffer from a very bad cough that would not go away.
‘It would have been Christmas of 2019, we were at her house and she kept coughing and coughing. She didn’t seem sick, but the sound of her cough just wasn’t right.
‘It was like a painful, harsh sound, like, it wasn’t normal, it really sounded like it was coming from her lungs — and not the average just clearing your throat.
The above family photo shows a bottle of talc powder positioned in the background
‘I remember one of us asking her, like, mom, like, you need to get that cough checked out.
‘And she was like, “I know I’ve had this cough forever. It won’t go away”.
‘But she said she thought it was just like a regular cold or cough that was just hard to get rid of.’
The above pictures demonstrate how much Ms Garcia used the powder. They show her children smothered in it from head to toe.
The following month Ms Garcia was overcome with a coughing fit while driving home from work at an executive postal service that was so bad she was left struggling to breathe. It prompted her to head to the ER.
Studies showed that the mineral talcum powder was made from could be contaminated with asbestos, which could become aerosolized when the powder was used.
Asbestos fibers can be inhaled into the lungs, where they become trapped and do not break down — irritating the organ’s lining 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.
Penn Medicine says that patients with this type of cancer typically only survive for four to 18 months after diagnosis. Statistics show that only 12 percent of patients survive for five years after the disease is detected.
Later that year she became one of the 54,000 people who filed lawsuits against Johnson and Johnson — accusing the company of causing a multitude of cancers, also including ovarian, as well as other ailments.
After her diagnosis, Ms Garcia initially tried to get surgery to have the lining of her lungs removed — and cut out the cancer.
Ms Garcia is pictured above in hospital during her seven-month battle with the cancer
A date was scheduled, but when she arrived on surgery day and had a scan she was told her disease was inoperable — and the surgery was canceled.
She was then put on chemotherapy and went through four rounds of treatment.
But it took a heavy toll on her body, leaving her in constant pain and barely able to get out of bed — leading doctors to recommend hospice care.
She died on July 27, 2020.
Describing her mother’s battle, Ms Salcedo told DailyMail.com: ‘It was devastating, watching my mom go through that and be in excruciating pain. She was basically dying before our eyes.
‘But even at that time, she was all about making other people comfortable and happy — she was a mom first and she was concerned about how we were feeling even though she was the one in pain and the one suffering.
‘You could see on her face and hear in her voice how much pain she was in, but she kept saying “I’m fine, I’m going to be okay”, and worrying about us instead.’
Pleural mesothelioma is a slow-moving cancer that takes about two decades to form following exposure to asbestos.
It may not cause any symptoms in the early stages, before triggering warning signs like a persistent cough, shortness of breath and chest pain.
It is difficult to treat because the cancer tends to only be diagnosed when it has already spread to other areas of the body and affects the lining of the lungs first, which are difficult to operate on.
Ms Garcia is pictured above in a family photo
And shown again in another family photo taken during the Christmas period
Other members of the family are now also worried that they too could develop the same cancer after using Johnson and Johnson’s products.
Ms Salcedo said: ‘It’s a concern always at the back of our heads, of course, and it was something that was a concern for my mom when she first started her trial.
‘But as of right now, we’re all healthy thankfully — and hopefully, it stays that way.’
It was during the early days of her illness that the family instructed Texas-based Dean Omar Branham Shirley lawyers to fight Ms Garcia’s case.
The pharma company fought hard against them in court, turning over every stone they could find to prove their powder had not caused the illness.
Ms Salcedo explained how they had even reached out to Ms Garcia’s first husband and family friends to find an alternative asbestos exposure.
In court, they even went as far as to suggest that the family had been buying a fake version of their product from the local bodega.
But the jury eventually sided with the family, although the pay-out is yet to be received and lawyers say they could still appeal the ruling.
Ms Salcedo said: ‘I feel like we did this for her and I wish that she was here to have experienced it.
‘The whole time, I just thought that maybe now she can rest peacefully — she always asked us to continue her case if something happens to her.’
Ms Garcia was born in Chicago, the fifth out of eight children, and grew up sharing a single bedroom with her five sisters.
She married her first husband in the 1980s, with whom she had six children — with Johnson and Johnson’s powder being a mainstay in the family home — before the pair divorced in the 2010s.
She then met her partner Carlos at the same mailing center where she worked, although the pair had known each other from childhood.
At the same time, as her children moved out — she also found herself the grandmother to a posse of some 13 grandchildren.
Ms Garcia was quiet about the engagement after Carlos proposed on Christmas Eve, waiting until the family came over and one of them spotted a ring on her finger.
Her first question to the children upon them finding out was, ‘do you mind?’.
J&J is now set to make one of the biggest payouts in history over claims its talcum powder caused cancer and other ailments, after offering a $6.5billion deal to those who filed lawsuits against the company.
Early reports suggest more than 75 percent of claimants have voted in favor of the deal, which was the threshold needed.