"Wilma Subra, a diminutive grandmother, has long challenged the corporate polluters in one of the nation's most toxic regions."

"NEW IBERIA, La. — The police asked the right question.

"Can you think of anyone who would want to do you harm?" investigators asked Wilma Subra, trying to understand who might have fired a gun at the diminutive grandmother.

Enemies?

Subra could arrange them alphabetically, or geographically, or in descending order according to how much her work as an environmental chemist had cost them in money or public embarrassment.

She had gone after so many corporate polluters over the decades, the question had just too many possible responses.

Authorities never found the person who shot at her while she was working at her desk by the front window. The soft-spoken crusader's response to the threat was to put bars on her windows, move her desk to the back of the house — and keep going."

Julie Cart reports for the Los Angeles Times August 27, 2013. [2]