That's when Cooper's heart sank. Soon after, she called her mother in exhaustion. "'There are some things terribly, terribly wrong at WorldCom,'" Patsy remembers her daughter saying. "And I was just pained at the tone of her voice." Several times Cooper told her colleagues she was concerned about what this would mean for the families of implicated WorldCom executives. "One of the things about Cynthia," says an employee who has worked closely with her, "is that if she has to step on toes, she's not uncomfortable doing that. But at the same time, she has great empathy. Those are two things that don't always go together."

A showdown was scheduled for June 20. Cooper and a member of her team headed to Washington for an audit-committee meeting of WorldCom's board of directors. Sullivan would be there to present his side of the story. "We kept waiting up until the very end for Scott to pull a rabbit out of a hat," says a person close to the case. Relations had become so tense that at the last minute, when Cooper and her colleague learned that the management team was booked at the same hotel, they switched to another one.

At the meeting, Sullivan tried to explain the accounting strategy and asked for more time to fully support his argument. The committee members gave him the weekend. But he could not convince them. On June 24 the audit committee told Sullivan and controller Myers that they would be terminated if they did not resign before the board meeting the next day.

Sullivan refused to step down and was fired. Myers resigned. The next day, WorldCom came clean about its books. Cooper went directly to her parents' house and sat down at the table in stunned silence. It was an appropriate pausing place. Cooper attributes her endurance in the investigation to her mother. "She would say, 'Never allow yourself to be intimidated; always think about the consequences of your actions.'"

Cooper, like the FBI's Rowley, rejects any attempt to link her actions to her gender. "I had two men standing right next to me," she says of her investigation. "In the end, it is what life finds in us that makes us different."

Never did Cooper imagine she would become the public face of the WorldCom audit. But in early July reporters showed up at her home and her parents' place in Clinton. Republican Congressman Billy Tauzin of Louisiana, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, had released her audit memos to the press, declaring, "This is Fraud 101." A WorldCom representative phoned her and said, "The press is calling, and they want to make you a hero." Cooper could not stomach the attention. "I'm not a hero. I'm just doing my job," she said. "There was nothing to celebrate," she remembers.

For three days after the announcement, her husband Lance recalls, she did not come home at all. "At times I felt like I was in a very dark place," Cooper says. She read and reread the 23rd Psalm: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me." At various times during the ordeal, she has been screamed at and she has been patronized, say her colleagues. She continued to work, keeping long hours to help the accounting firm KPMG redo Andersen's audit and staying at her parents' house because it was closer to the office. Finally, Lance piled their two kids into the car and drove to the Ferrells' house so he could see her. "I just told her, 'Don't worry about losing your job. We'll find a way.'" Lance was a cheerleader in college. He knew how to listen and knew not to try to talk his wife out of taking action. "I never once said, 'Are you sure you want to do this?'"

Meanwhile, Cooper, a woman known as a perfectionist, was losing control over her domain at WorldCom. One day she walked into the office and found eight investigators perusing her files. All her phone and e-mail messages are being collected, to this day. And she continues to cooperate with a steady stream of investigators, from the FBI to the Securities and Exchange Commission, says her attorney, Bob Muse.

In August, Sullivan was indicted on charges of securities fraud. He faces up to 65 years in prison. The California public-employees' retirement system—the largest state pension fund in the country—is suing to regain some of the $580 million it lost in the WorldCom debacle.

Cooper still looks distantly like the Clinton High prom princess she once was, and the past nine months have not left her jaded. "We have 62,000 employees working very hard. These employees did not do this. The vast majority of WorldCom is made up of capable, honest employees trying to do the right thing. Only a handful of people were involved in any wrongdoing," she says. "I feel a personal obligation to see this thing to some kind of conclusion." When asked what that might be, she answers, "I don't know yet."

Whenever Cooper admits to having had painful moments at WorldCom, she follows the acknowledgment with a big, beaming smile. But when I hand her a picture of Ebbers and Sullivan—her former mentors—holding up their hands to be sworn in before Congress, Cooper's eyes well up with tears. She turns the picture over and says, "I don't ever want to see that again." Friends estimate that Cooper has lost close to 30 lbs. The other day she had to laugh when her skirt nearly fell off while she was talking to a colleague at the office. A safety pin saved the day.

So far, Cooper says, she is encouraged by the changes at her firm. The company has carried out many of her recommendations. And she firmly believes there is a point to all of the loss. "There really is a corporate-governance revolution across the country. Internal-audit departments are going to be taken more seriously," she says, noting that the Sarbanes-Oxley law passed by Congress last July requires all public companies to maintain internal-audit departments. She has received more than 100 letters and e-mails from strangers who want to thank and encourage her.

But she has not been personally thanked by a single senior executive at WorldCom, her colleagues say. And there is grumbling that some employees think the company could have borrowed its way out of its problems and avoided bankruptcy if she had stayed quiet. Some people who used to smile and chat with Cooper and her team by the coffee maker don't do that anymore. "What gets me angry is that after all she has done, you would think she would be rewarded," says a friend and colleague at WorldCom. "She went through a battle, one of the biggest battles in corporate America. And that promotion didn't come." Cooper will not comment on any possible resentment, except to note that a member of the audit committee did send her a grateful note and that she is looking forward to working closely with the new management team.

In November, WorldCom's new CEO, Michael Capellas, held a rally to try to light a spark in the demoralized WorldCom work force. He called members of his management team onto the stage, and the all-male ensemble sang, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!" Cooper was not there; the rally was in Virginia, and she was back in Mississippi, with her team, watching via webcast.

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