Indeed, on only her third night on Pulau Tiga, at a torch-lit "tribal council" of eight castaways (a rival group of eight camped elsewhere on the island), Christopher, who had successfully battled breast cancer in 1998, got the news after a secret ballot that she was out. "As a former athlete," she says, "there's a certain humiliation at coming off the island first."
Say this much, though, for Christopher: She may have had to swallow her pride, but at least she didn't have to eat a rat.
Five days after Christopher got bounced, four of her ex-compatriots dined on protein-rich roasted rodent. Such is life on Survivor, scheduled to premiere May 31. Over the next 13 weeks, the castaways, ranging in age from 22 to 72 and under the relentless scrutiny of a TV film crew, will continue to vote one of their own off the island. When it's down to the final two, the winner (chosen by the last seven to be evicted) sails off a millionaire. Christopher got just $2,500 and a plane ticket home.
Now, back in her cozy two-bedroom condo in Walnut Creek, Calif., Christopher, a divorced mother, says, "I feel terrible. People [here] were counting on me representing senior citizens." Facing them is "what's going to be hard."
"I'm proud of her anyway," says her only child, Dan Shumaker, 31, a technical director at Industrial Light & Magic. "She is an amazing lady in many respects. The island is not that tough when you think about it. Raising a kid as a single parent and going through the breast cancer and chemo, those are serious challenges."
But hardly the only ones his mother has faced. One of four children of Ian, an Olympia, Wash., real estate executive who died four years ago at 96, and his wife, Helen, now 90, Christopher grew up to teach educationally challenged students in Oakland. Because she was unable to conceive, she and her husband, a fellow teacher, adopted Dan in 1969 and divorced two years later. In 1991 she had a benign brain tumor removed, and seven years later began 12 weeks of chemotherapy and 37 radiation treatments for breast cancer, of which she's now symptom-free.
When CBS put out a call for Survivor contestants last October, Christopher was among the 6,000 who applied. "George Bernard Shaw said, 'I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.' I think having had to face my mortality gives me more of a sense of that," says Christopher. "I said, 'No, don't do this,' " recalls best friend Dee Lee, 74. "But she likes taking on exciting things."
Toting her ukulele, which she usually plays for Alzheimer's patients (each castaway was allowed to bring one luxury item), Christopher entertained the other contestants on the six-hour boat ride to Pulau Tiga. But later, during a race between the two teams of islanders, Christopher tripped. Her team lost. "I said, 'I'm really sorry, you guys.' I knew they were going to vote me off because it was like, 'Oh, that's okay, Sonja.' They just didn't get a chance to know who I was," she says.
Would she ever apply for Survivor again? "You bet," says Christopher. "And you know what I would do? I'd soak my feet in salt brine or something for months to toughen them."
Michael A. Lipton
Kelly Carter on Pulau Tiga and in Walnut Creek
- Contributors:
- Kelly Carter.
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