The Devil and Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich-Ellis, the environmental crusader whose story graced movie screens a few years ago, launched her latest campaign last spring. Along with Edward Masry, the lawyer she still works for, Brockovich-Ellis (who changed her name after remarrying) made a stunning allegation: Oil wells on the campus of Beverly Hills High School were spewing a carcinogen -- benzene -- and causing cancer among students, staff, and alumni.

After meeting a young graduate who has had two types of cancer, and hearing about the wells on campus, Brockovich-Ellis headed out to test the air around the school in November 2002. "I was just sitting in the bleachers," she told parents gathered for a meeting last March at the Beverly Hills Hotel, "and we got benzene readings that were at very alarming levels -- at least five times higher than on the 405," a freeway. The result of this contamination, she continued, was Hodgkin's disease at sixteen times the expected levels among alumni.

Brockovich-Ellis didn't offer the school district or city officials her test results, nor did she invite officials to the meeting. Instead, she went to the media. In February 2003, a month before the meeting with parents, she gave an exclusive interview on the test results to CBS's Los Angeles affiliate, KCBS. Titled "Toxic School?" the segment began, "If your child goes to Beverly Hills High School, you should pay specific attention to this story, because there is growing evidence that going to school, sitting in classrooms, and especially exercising on the play fields could have your child breathing toxic fumes." Brockovich-Ellis told KCBS that after she first detected high benzene levels, six subsequent tests produced the same results.

The case had the perfect mix of ingredients -- wealth, celebrities, and the whiff of scandal. (Beverly, as the school is known, has graduates ranging from the actor Nicolas Cage to Monica Lewinsky, and has been earning royalties from the oil wells for decades.) A mini media frenzy ensued, with coverage from Good Morning America to The New York Times to newspapers in New Zealand. "Beverly Hills is not all Botox, faux-Spanish mansions and imported sports cars," wrote the august Economist magazine. "It also has cancer clusters, and these have become Erin Brockovich's latest crusade."

Journalists noted that there were two sides of the story: Brockovich-Ellis said there was a problem, while the city and the wells' owner, a company named Venoco, said there wasn't. The New York Times's coverage was typical, offering dueling quotes while leaning toward Brockovich-Ellis's position: a celebrity school's students say oil wells are making them sick, announced a June 17 story.

But was there, in fact, a problem?

One reporter -- a former stand-up comedian working for one of the lowest-profile publications in Los Angeles -- decided to find out. In the process she helped uncover what appears to be a Hollywood heroine's campaign of deception.

Norma Zager, editor-in-chief of the Beverly Hills Courier, a free weekly, doesn't fit the image of a muckraker. Zager, who is fifty-seven, often wears a suede cowboy jacket with tassels, is (endlessly) cheery, and looks, well, like the contented Jewish mother that she is. (She has two grown children.) "I'm usually the biggest pussycat reporter around," says Zager. "I get my feelings hurt if somebody calls up to complain about one of my stories."

Zager, who briefly worked as a reporter in Detroit after college, spent about fourteen years doing stand-up comedy routines in Los Angeles and Las Vegas before deciding in 1999 to return to journalism. She found work as a reporter for the Courier, and about a year ago was promoted to the top spot. (It wasn't a huge jump; the Courier has two full-time editorial employees.) The paper typically covers A-list charity balls and small-town happenings. bh park rangers share experiences, it announced recently. Zager's duties range from editing and reporting, to writing a column on celebrity homes.