Survivor's Latest Skeletons
Posted by: producer
August 29, 2003
Christa Hastie was born and raised in Ojai, California. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she lives the life of a quiet computer programmer, engaged to be married. But is there more to this young blonde woman's story? SurvivorWeb investigative reporters seem to think so.
In Christa's CBS bio she claims she "is most proud of earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Irvine, although she believes her real education comes from living life and diving into any and all opportunities." Her bio also makes mention of a "minor incident where she was once arrested for a misdemeanor and charged with "disrupting an officer's ability to perform his duties." While in college, she hopped on her car and refused to get off the hood when she discovered it was in the process of being towed.
Is that all there is to the story?
Not even close. SurvivorWeb discovered that she was not only hopped up on the hood of her car, she was probably hopped up on a variety of chemicals at the time. A quick search of Google's newsgroups turned up a rather interesting side of Christa Hilda Hastie, student at the University of California, Irvine. This was the same time Survivor's Christa Hastie was attending UCI.
This is what she had to say in the newsgroup, "alt.drugs:"
"Does anybody have any good recommendations for getting the most out of
your cocaine? I mean, can you take any pills, i.e. Vivarin, to keep your
high for longer periods of time? Or, can you actually smoke cocaine - is
this crack? Oh, and last but not least, does anybody know where to find a
'coke bong' near los angeles? Perhaps Melrose? Thanks for any
suggestions!
Christa :-)
1999/01/25"
It also appears as if Christa might have been suffering some financial woes :
"Well send those rocks on over my way and I'll send you a thousand pics!
That would be enough to make anybody orgasm....god, now you got me
thinking...thanks Phreex...(*shiver*)..way to get me all horny now!
Your admirer,
Christa :-)
1998/09/02"
She also seems to have been on the cutting edge of eCommerce:
"Where and how do you order this stuff....anybody have a phone # or url?
Thanks!
Christa :-)"
But casual drug use aside, we started to question why the producers of Survivor would cast such a woman. We found an easy answer with her ability to adapt to difficult situations. Say, for instance, you don't have grade-A speed around, what would you do?
"Say try this: 1 Aspirin, 1 25mg ephedrine(if u can find that), and 1
200mg Vivarin.....that should work ok....hang in there, I understand :-)!
Christa :-)"
In the end, however, we realize Christa did grow up in a somewhat, ok heavy, liberal community of former hippies. We assume she has turned her life around and no longer lays down on the hood of her car. Follow-up newsgroup posts have her asking questions about relational databases.
Maybe she was better off with the Coke and Speed?
FOLLOW UP POST:
From SurvivorSucks' "
winnielosie (post count = 1)
"Christa and I were friends at UCI for a couple years. When I heard she was on Survivor I started checking out the fan sites and forums and naturally came across this topic. Some of the posters here seem to be so naive and gullible that they’ll take any scrap of info and run with it.
Anyhow, at least some of you realized that even the stupidest person wouldn’t use their REAL first, middle, and last name and their school account to seek incriminating info about how to make drugs. Seriously, people. She used to lurk and post on newsgroups like that all the time just to see what it was all about. You can tell by her posts that she obviously didn’t know what she was talking about. I’d bet money that there isn’t a single person reading this that hasn’t pretended to be somebody else on the web before.
There’s no arguing that Christa had a general problem with authority and loved controversy, all the time. She fed off of it and always was willing to “mix it up” to get a point across or just get under someone’s skin. You’ve all read her bio – jumping on the hood of her car to keep it from getting towed. There are too many more incidents like this to list – that one just happened to get her arrested.
The truth is, she couldn’t have been farther from what you think while in school. She was a sorority girl and served two terms in student government as a Legislative Council Representative. She wrote many articles for one of the school papers taking strong, outspoken stands on one issue or another. I’m surprised you guys haven’t found those yet either. This stuff you’ve found is nothing. There are volumes of controversial and inflammatory papers, essays, etc. she’s written, all in the name of gaining perspective or just trying to open people’s eyes to the fact that there are many different ways of looking at things – or just f-ing with professors. Just look at her book list that you guys seem to have found. Topics such as drugs, racism, sexism, feminism, animal rights, government corruption and so on all cause controversy and bring out strong emotion in people. Thus, Christa was interested and would jump into the fray just to see what would happen.
Anyhow, the fact that you guys were duped by this gives me high hopes for Christa’s chances on the show. One way or the other, she’ll make it great. "
Not at all.
To be defamation of character, the statement would have to be false. In this case, the article is clearly quoting statments made by Christa. At no point does the article say she is a coke head, or actually used drugs.
In this case, the two defenses that make most logical sense are:
Truth - A statement may have hurt your reputation, but if it was true then anyone can say it and have a good defence against a lawsuit.
Fair comment - We all are free to comment, even harshly, about issues of public interest, as long as our comments are honest, not malicious, and based on fact.
From Sucks:
"Christa's still using drugs.
She was reported to HR at Sony for bringing pot to work and openly asking her entire floor if anyone knew how she could smuggle it on a flight to Florida over Easter weekend, 2003.
HR was investigating the incident when she asked for two months leave (apparently to be on Survivor). When her boss' boss wouldn't let her have the 2 months off (her boss was more than eager to give it to her; he hated her), she quit and had to be escorted from the building. As she was leaving the building, she was telling people she'd been fired, but she actually quit. Then she told her boss' boss he was "a fucking asshole."
Anyway, I saw her come to work completely stoned or on SOMETHING way more than a few times. I think you can count the number of people who miss her at Sony on ZERO hands.
Also, that shit about her father being her hero? She told a "friend" at Sony that she hated her father and that she'd been molested as a child. But, again, she was probably just doing research for a term paper.
Finally, I just want to add that I have never met anyone before Christa with such an almost non-existent sense of right and wrong. She called anyone who didn't bow to her an idiot to anyone who'd listen. She thought she was too good to park where everyone else parked so she parked her blue Ford Ranger step-side in one-hour parking and put an old ticket on it because, she said, parking police are "fucking idiots" who wouldn't check (I guess she was right). She didn't question authority -- she openly defied it because she always thought she knew everything better than everyone but never could prove it. She openly admitted to stealing from her volleyball teammates and to frequent shoplifting. Working with someone so poorly socialized was scary and nerve-wracking. When I first heard she'd been cast in Survivor 7, I couldn't believe it. But then I thought, who better? Christa is someone ANYONE can hate. And THAT is TV-gold.
--knowitall "
Her usenet posting were a hoax? Um, no.. if you search you'll see my name in more then a few of her posts .. we had conversed via email for a good month, and she was DEFINITLY interested in precuring small amounts of methamphetamine along with obtaining prescripting drugs via overseas pharmacies - the one you'll see her refrencing was Pharmacy International (now defunct) .. I provided her with the link to their site along with some recomendations for some benzodiazepines, though she was apprehensive about mail-order (even though she wouldnt get in any trouble if customs siezed the package) ...
Honestly she seemed to be something of a flake regarding hard drugs so I didn't really persue this one... the pics she sent me were tame, nothing worth backing up and were lost years ago ..
Still, she seemed like a really nice person and I wish her the best on the show.. nothing wrong with wanting to get a little fucked up from time to time, and hey, I'm sure most all of us have done something in the past that could come out and haunt us if we were thrust into the public eye, and Survivor is just one of those programs that makes all its contestants good targets ...
As for why her full name appeared on the post (some people are saying this shows it was "faked" and that "no one would post using their full name" - it's how her university (and many others) format their users accounts - her emails to me were the same format...
