Why Are Beverly Hills Grads Getting Cancer?

June 18 -- At 36, Lori Urov had spent too many holidays in hospitals with her family, but she was planning one more.

"I'll be 37 next week," Urov, a devoted wife and mother of two young children, told Good Morning America recently. "I'll have my birthday in the hospital."

In the previous few years, cancer had ravaged her body, and robbed her of precious moments with her loved ones. When Good Morning America met Lori Urov — along with her husband, Tim, and their children Lee and Marty — just last month, she was preparing to undergo a final desperate stem cell transplant to save her life.

"I just felt like someone had opened my mouth and poured Hodgkin's disease down my throat," she said. "And here I am with probably less than a year to live and two kids to raise. I felt literally poisoned."

Urov never made it to her 37th birthday. She lost her battle with cancer just 10 days after speaking to GMA. But she doesn't want her death to stop the message of what she had long believed: that her cancer was the result of toxins that attacked her while she was a California high school student. Urov attended Beverly Hills High along with a star-studded list of alumni that includes Angelina Jolie, Nicolas Cage and David Schwimmer.

Glamorous Beverly Hills is not normally associated with heavy industry, but right next to the school's athletic fields sits a network of working oil rigs. Some community members fear that pollutants from those rigs have been escaping into the air for years, poisoning its students.

Wrongful Death Suit Filed

Suspicious and concerned, hundreds of students have teamed up with celebrity environmental crusaders Erin Brockovich and Ed Masry. The legal team claims to have discovered a shocking cancer rate 20 to 30 times higher than the national average. The well owners dispute the charges.

"I think what the tests show is that the air quality is safe for the workers, safe for the neighborhood, safe for the school," said Mike Edwards, the vice president of Venoco, the rig's current operator.

Last week in Superior Court in Los Angeles, Masry and Brockovich filed a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit against more than 25 oil and gas companies on behalf of plaintiffs who attended the high school between 1977 and 1996. They allege contaminants from the oil wells caused cancer in 21 former students and killed 3 others, including Lori Urov.