By Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross
The San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO — A former San Francisco firefighter is facing criminal charges after she collected $140,000 in workers’ compensation and disability payments — while she was participating in ultramarathons and triathlons from the Sierra to Germany.
Christina Hijjawi, 37, surrendered at the Hall of Justice last week, after a warrant was issued for her arrest on multiple felony counts of workers’ compensation and disability insurance fraud, and attempted perjury, authorities said.
Hijjawi is free on $30,000 bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 3.
“Many of these (endurance) events were completed while Hijjawi reportedly was too injured to work,” said Erica Terry Derryck, spokeswoman for District Attorney Kamala Harris.
According to court documents, Hijjawi first suffered an injury to her right shoulder fighting a blaze in December 1998. The injury intermittently left her either off work or assigned to desk duty.
Two years ago, Hijjawi reported suffering a second injury — this one to her right thumb — while undergoing a department evaluation of her earlier injury to determine her fitness for duty.
City Hall sources say the San Francisco’s Human Resources Department eventually got involved in the case, and started shooting some telling video footage of her on the sly. It seems her shoulder and thumb weren’t bothering her so much that she couldn’t compete in some of the toughest athletic competitions around, city officials concluded.
Indeed, if Hijjawi were trying to hide her fitness quest, she wasn’t doing a very good job. Our own Google search turned up records showing her running in marathons in Lake Tahoe, Los Angeles, Honolulu and elsewhere.
From 2001 to 2006, according to records on the Web site Athlinks, Hijjawi ran in no fewer than a dozen marathons. And her biography on another site shows she was taking on even bigger challenges, including the Canada 2005 Ultraman super triathlon competition — in which competitors swim 6.2 miles, ride a bike for 170 miles and run 52 miles, twice the distance of a marathon. Completing it took her more than 33 hours.
In June 2006, she took part in the grueling, 50-kilometer Mount Diablo summer trail run, a race where participants go from the base to the summit of the 3,800-foot Contra Costa landmark and back — and then do it again. Athlinks says she clocked in at eight hours and 31 minutes.
A year after that, the San Francisco Fire Commission fired Hijjawi after upholding administrative misconduct charges against her related to the alleged workers’ compensation fraud, department officials tell us.
Her firing doesn’t seem to have slowed her down. In June 2007 — the very week she lost her job — she traveled to Roth, Germany, for the Quelle Challenge Roth triathlon, according to the TriResults.com Web site.
And this past May, records show, she took part in the rugged Pony Express run through the foothills near Cameron Park, east of Folsom.
Her time for the 100-kilometer (62-mile) run, according to Athlinks: 11 hours and 55 minutes.
Robert Mathis of Incline Village, Nev., who puts on several Ultrarunner.net high-endurance races in which Hijjawi has competed, said the events require participants to be in “great shape” and demand near-fanatical training.
“Some people consider you a lunatic,” Mathis said.
Hijjawi’s attorney, Christopher Shea, said he had not seen the D.A.'s evidence against his client. But he cautioned, “There’s a big difference between competing in a triathlon and running into a burning building with a 150-pound hose.”
“All they are at this point are allegations,” Shea said of the D.A. complaint against Hijjawi, adding that she “is not admitting any culpability.”