Found it. The 24 November 2001 New York Times article with the quote from Kathy Nguyen's x-husband was posted on FreeRepublic -
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/577106/posts Some hilites, including the name of the x-husband - or, as this article says, estranged husband:
- According to city officials, the woman's estranged second husband, tracked down by investigators, said that while he had no specific information about how she might have been exposed, he knew she did like to smell things.
- Even Dave Cruz, who manages the Bronx apartment complex where Ms. Nguyen lived, and who rushed her to the hospital and was the last to speak with her, told investigators that he had little to offer. She seemed to have no idea what ailed her, he recalled....
- Investigators tracked down an estranged second husband of Ms. Nguyen's, Jeng Gang Chi, who said that Ms. Nguyen had no contact with family members who remained in Vietnam. He did tell them, curiously, that she liked to smell things.
- [Dave Cruz, who drove her to the hospital,] could hear that she was having difficulty breathing. "She said in her soft voice, `Dave, it just hurts when I try to breathe,' " he recalled.... [H]e quizzed her. Did she have asthma? Bronchitis? " `No, no,' " he recalled her saying. " `It just hurts. It hurts to breathe.' "
As a freeper, Ann Archy, pointed out, referring to one of the other inhalation anthrax victims who died: << ...the postman who called 911 and told that operator the entire story sounded like he had NO trouble breathng...curious. >>
This may confirm that Nguyen's case was unusually severe, right from the start.