Jump to full article: The Missoulian, 2008-09-29
Author: VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian
Intro: San Francisco comedienne Rene Hicks used to be an accountant.
And perhaps, like Newhart, she "killed 'em" - had her audience rolling in the aisles - while on stage.
But this is where Hicks' story takes a strange turn.
Because her audience, you see, darn near killed her.
Hicks, who never smoked a cigarette in her life - she was a long-distance runner in college, for heaven's sake - came down with lung cancer in 2001.
She blames the secondhand smoke she breathed in over years of performing in clubs and bars.
"That's how I got cancer," says the comic, who appears Saturday in Polson at an event where the Lake County Health Department will hand out its Healthy Business Awards.
One of those businesses is the St. Luke Healthcare Network of Ronan, which next week will extend its no-smoking policy to include a ban on smoking outdoors on all its properties in Lake County. . . .
"Anything a tobacco company does is funny," Hicks says. "I mean, they're trying to kill people, and trying to make it seem like they're not. There's good fodder there, the new ways they come up with to sell death to people, to dress it up."
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