In July 2004, Tona Henderson’s mother handed her a copy of the Messenger Index and told her to sit down and read it.

The article was part of a series the Emmett newspaper had begun running about the more than 100 above-ground nuclear tests conducted decades earlier — a series prompted by a local woman fighting cancer who didn’t know what had caused her illness.

For Henderson, who had watched cancer move through her own family and community for years, the story was the first thread connecting the dots.

She began working with Sen. Mike Crapo’s office that year to push for Idaho’s inclusion under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, known as RECA.

Henderson said the team recently completed eight workshops across East Idaho and is now scheduling stops in Grangeville, Lewiston, Moscow and Coeur d’Alene, tentatively planned for mid-July.

The law provides compensation to people who developed certain cancers after exposure to radiation from the government’s nuclear weapons program — but for years, Idaho wasn’t included. That changed last July, when RECA was reauthorized and expanded as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law July 4, 2025.

A downwinder is anyone who lived in or passed through an area hit by fallout from above-ground nuclear testing that the U.S. government conducted between the 1950s and early 1960s, mostly at the Nevada Test Site.

To qualify for compensation, a person has to show they lived in a covered state or county for a set stretch of time during the testing years, then went on to develop one of a specific list of cancers. All of Idaho is covered, along with Utah, New Mexico and parts of Arizona and Nevada.

Henderson said most of the people who worked alongside her in the bill’s early years have since passed. A new group has taken their place.

“I kind of liken it to a snowball of picking up people as I go along,” Henderson said.

What started as informal outreach has become a sprawling support network. Henderson began holding workshops to walk people through the RECA application process, starting with one at the Emmett library in October.

She didn’t know what to expect, and 217 people showed up.

Since then, with help from Snake River Alliance director Leigh Ford organizing fundraisers, the workshops have grown into a statewide effort that has reached close to 2,600 people, according to Henderson.

Even with that reach, thousands of Idaho downwinder claims remain stuck in the pipeline, waiting to be processed — a backlog that helps explain why Henderson’s phone rarely stops ringing.

“I had one person who said I’ll be able to put a roof on my house when they get their money. They said my roof won’t leak anymore. I had one person say I’ve been diagnosed with an illness, and it’s over $800 a month for my medication that I’ve not been able to afford, and I got my money, and I’ll be able to live,” Henderson said.

At larger workshops, she is joined by Shannon Carter of the Twin Falls County Commissioners’ Office, who demonstrates the online application system, and Rebecca Barlow, project director for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program clinic, known as RESEP, at Intermountain St. George Regional Hospital, the closest such clinic to Idaho.

Barlow also helps attendees understand what RESEP offers: free annual cancer screenings for qualifying downwinders, along with guidance on what risks to watch for based on their exposure history.

Henderson said her phone, inbox and two Facebook groups stay constantly busy with people seeking help. She emphasized that applicants do not need to pay anyone to help them file a claim, despite some being approached by individuals or companies offering to handle the process for a fee.

“I can’t fix it,” Henderson said, referring to the technical issues that crop up when relatives try to submit documentation on a parent’s or grandparent’s behalf.

She recommends paper applications for those cases, saying online filing works best for someone applying for themselves or a spouse.

RECA sorts the people it covers into five boxes — downwinders, onsite participants, uranium workers, ore transporters and uranium millers, and Manhattan Project waste claimants.

Which box someone lands in determines almost everything about their claim. Most categories receive a flat $100,000 payout. Manhattan Project waste claimants who are still living get a smaller amount tied to their documented medical costs.

What changes more than the dollar amount is which diseases actually count.

A downwinder can file for thyroid, breast, stomach, brain or bladder cancer, along with leukemia and certain lymphomas. A uranium worker, exposed to many of the same radioactive particles, cannot claim any of those — their list runs instead through lung disease and kidney failure.

A Manhattan Project waste claimant gets a list that borrows from the downwinder side but adds bone and renal cancer — diagnoses no downwinder can file under at all.

The version of RECA Henderson originally fought for looked different from what eventually passed. A more expansive bill cleared the Senate by a wide margin in March 2024, with broader coverage areas, additional compensable cancers and full medical benefits.

The House never took it up. When the legislation returned in January 2025, the medical benefits were cut and the compensation amount reduced, Henderson said.

What got cut was not abstract. Bone cancer, kidney cancer, prostate cancer, uterine cancer and cervical cancer are not on the downwinder list, even though related cancers like ovarian cancer are covered.

Leukemia is compensable for downwinders — except chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which is excluded outright, despite the American Medical Association recognizing it as the same disease as a form of lymphoma that is covered. A downwinder diagnosed with CLL is denied if they file under leukemia and approved if they file that same diagnosis under lymphoma.

The inconsistencies extend past disease lists. A downwinder can claim cancers a uranium worker cannot, and a uranium worker can claim lung and kidney conditions no downwinder is allowed to file under, even when both trace back to the same era of radiation exposure.

Eligibility can also come down to geographic boundaries. Part of Clark County, Nevada, is covered and part is not, split along township lines, and the Duck Valley Indian Reservation straddles the Nevada-Idaho border in a way that leaves some residents covered and their neighbors not.

These were not oversights buried in dense legal language nobody noticed. They were specific provisions that were not understood and neglected, that later got negotiated away in the final days before a vote.

“It’s just stuff that should have been corrected, wasn’t, and it’s very confusing for people,” Henderson said.

Henderson also raised concerns about Native American applicants living on reservations across the covered states, saying the Indian Health Service has not been releasing cancer records needed to support claims.

She said she has contacted the offices of Crapo, Sen. Jim Risch and Rep. Mike Simpson to push for action.

A provision that would have allowed an affidavit process for residency — important for applicants who may lack birth, death or marriage certificates from that era — was also removed from the final bill.

Even with those gaps, the law’s effect since reauthorization has been substantial — federal data shows hundreds of millions of dollars in claims have already been paid out, with the vast majority of recent applicants approved.

She pointed Idahoans toward the Idaho Downwinders Facebook group for updates, and said email is the most reliable way to reach her given the volume of phone calls.

Not everyone in the new group of volunteers wants to be publicly identified, Henderson said, though she pointed to one person in particular: Leigh Ford, director of the Snake River Alliance.

For Henderson, the families left waiting on a denied claim, an unreleased medical record or a missing county line aren’t a footnote to the law’s success. They’re the reason the fight isn’t over.

“We just lived out our lives, and did the things that we thought were, you know, you raise your own gardens, and your kids go outside and play. Who knew that grass that those kids were playing in was radioactive,” Henderson said.