ou've seen the movie. Now a lecture series, a book, and television specials are in the works for environmental activist Erin Brockovich, who was in town recently to receive an award from the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.
Ms. Brockovich was the featured speaker for the coalition's 18th annual anniversary gala, held in San Jose.
She also squeezed in time the next morning to attend a breakfast at the Atherton home of Carolyn Bechtel before returning to Southern California.
Ms. Brockovich told her Atherton audience, many of whom were members of the press: "You have a lot of power in this room. People do make a difference." Usually blase journalists crowded around to get her autograph or have her sign videos of the "Erin Brockovich" movie.
Ms. Brockovich was dressed more conservatively than her film counterpart, Julia Roberts, but still sported her signature bustier, stiletto-heel boots, and lots of blonde hair.
"Yes, I'm a real person," she told her audience. "And I operate at a gut level. We all have a right to scream and yell. I'm not proud of my language, but sometimes it's fitting." (Four-letter words were frequent in the movie script.)
The movie is based on real life. As a divorced mother of three, Ms. Brockovich was seriously injured in a traffic accident in Reno. She moved back to Southern California and hired the law firm of Masry & Vititoe to handle her car-accident case.
Unable to find work, she begged the law firm to hire her as a file clerk. Not long after, she found a file on a pro bono real estate case that aroused her curiosity.
Getting permission from the firm's founder, Ed Masry, she began investigating the matter on her own.
Ms. Brockovich's investigation of a PG&E cover-up of groundwater contamination that caused illness in Hinkley, California, eventually resulted in a 1996 order for PG&E to pay $333 million to more than 600 Hinkley residents.
Continuing her work, Ms. Brockovich is director of environmental research at Masry & Vititoe, where she is involved in other major environmental lawsuits she has put together. Remarried in 1999 to actor Eric Ellis, she lives with her husband and children in Agoura Hills, California.
