Debi Austin, a well-known anti-smoking advocate in California, passed away on Friday after a 20-year-battle with cancer, her family told The Los Angeles Times. She was 62.
In her famous commercial, she said she had her first cigarette when she was 13, and tried to quit later but couldn't. She spoke out against those who say nicotine is not addictive.
"How can they say that?" she asked in her ad, blowing smoke out of the surgical hole in her throat.
The public awareness TV ad, which began airing in the mid-1990s, made Austin a powerful anti-smoking symbol.
After she was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx, she had a laryngectomy, which removed both the tumor and her vocal cords. As a result, she learned to speak using esophageal speech, also known as "burp talk," The Los Angeles Times reported.
She made her startling "Voicebox" ad once a 4-year-old niece drew a black dot on her own neck, mimicking Austin's scar, saying, "I want to be like you."
California State Department of Health officials told The Los Angles Times in a statement following Austin's death that the "Voicebox" ad is "the most-recognized and talked about California tobacco control ad."
"Debi was a pioneer in the fight against tobacco and showed tremendous courage by sharing her story to educate Californians on the dangers of smoking," the agency's Dr. Ron Chapman said in the statement.
Austin believed people remembered her because she was scary - and she hoped that once teenagers saw her ad, they would think twice about trying cigarettes.
"I am the worst-case scenario that your mother told you about," Austin told The Los Angeles Times in 2010. "I am the walking dead, the castoff of the tobacco industry that they can't fix, they can't heal."
Austin was born on April 13, 1950 in Illinois and moved to Los Angeles when she turned 4.
She tried her first cigarette as she walked home from junior high in Canoga Park, puffing on an unfiltered Camel she snatched from her father, The Los Angeles Times reported.
It all went downhill from there - in high school, she smoked a pack of unfiltered Camels each day. When she attended college at UC Berkeley and managed a small, private telephone company, she continued her habit.
In the early 1980s, she sought treatment for a chronic sore throat - and by 1992, she realized that there was a small lump under her jaw. A biopsy revealed that the bump was cancer of the larynx, The Los Angeles Times reported. Austin had previously met people at a support group who had their larynx removed, and she was horrified that this could be her fate.
"I'd never met or heard anyone who'd had a laryngectomy," she told The Los Angeles Times in 1997. "I thought, 'Omigod, I make my living on the telephone and now I'm going to sound like Elmer Fudd on Thorazine for the rest of my life.'"
Austin said that she was "well-compensated" for her ad - and she stopped smoking about eight months after it first aired, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Austin is survived by her sisters, Jamie Marshall of Portland, Ore., and Deena White of Canoga Park; and her brother, Jim Gardner of Camp Verde, Ariz.
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