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By Heather Newman | Photograph by Anne Rayner
Pam Collins was 21 and fresh out of college, when she heard about interviews for airline stewardesses. She had a college degree and her parents had different plans for their daughter, but Collins liked the prestige that came with the airline job, and the money sealed the deal. "They paid more than anyone else – $400 a month," Collins said.
But now she is the one paying. Collins is living with inoperable lung cancer. "They think it's a good likelihood that I got this from secondhand smoke exposure," she said. "Nobody smoked in my
family. There was high blood pressure and heart disease, and I thought that would be my nemesis. Never in a million years did I think it would be cancer."
During Collins' three decades as a stewardess, smoking on planes was commonplace – practically encouraged, she recalls. "They put these little five-pack cigarettes on their trays. We gave them away. They sat by me and blew smoke in my face for hours while I sat in the jump seat," said Collins, 60. "It was awful. There was no designated smoking and non-smoking area. I just don't think we thought about the impact. We didn't have all the information."
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