Woman Wages Anti-Smoking Fight : Health: Former teacher who got sick from breathing secondhand fumes on the job says she will use her experience in her campaign.

A Thousand Oaks woman who won $29,999 from the Los Angeles Unified School District over claims she was exposed to secondhand smoke said she intends to turn her experience into a campaign against smoking in all indoor places.

Esther Schiller, 56, received the money last week as a settlement to a workers’ compensation claim she filed 2 1/2 years ago against the school district after she was found to have chronic obstructive lung disease. She maintained that school officials did not take immediate action to prevent smoke from a smoking area from entering the classroom where she taught.

To bolster her campaign against smoking, Schiller, who worked 10 years as a teacher, says she is searching for other nonsmokers who have been injured by tobacco smoke.

“It’s like being attacked,” she said sitting in her back yard in Thousand Oaks, where she moved to get away from the smog that often blankets the Glendale area. “It’s like being physically assaulted.”

The Los Angeles school board in 1990 adopted a policy that forbids smoking in school buildings, district offices and district vehicles, a spokesman said. An official at Sun Valley Junior High School, where Schiller taught, said the school eliminated an indoor smoking area after her claim was filed.

“The smoking area is now located in the patio area,” Sun Valley Principal Emilio Garcia said.

Schiller is one of a handful of workers who have successfully filed such claims against their employers, said Mark Pertschuk, an attorney and co-director of the Berkeley-based Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.

Schiller’s case was an important victory, Pertschuk said, because “she really had severe injuries from passive smoke. She brought it to the attention of her employer, and they foolishly didn’t get it corrected.”

The organization does not collect statistics because many claims are never filed in court. But the settlements for injured workers have ranged from $30,000 to $80,000, he said.

The largest settlement on record was won by a Marin County waiter who was awarded $85,000 last year from a restaurant in Sausalito after he had a heart attack that he said was brought on by cigarette smoke, Pertschuk said.

Another Southern California case involves Andrea Portenier, a former Pacific Palisades insurance broker who filed a battery lawsuit against the insurance company Republic Hogg Robinson last year for exposing her to smoke.

“If you’re an employer in California, you’re dumb if you allow smoking and you have any nonsmokers in the workplace,” Pertschuk said.

Schiller said her problems started about five years ago at Sun Valley Junior High. Because of the L-shaped configuration of the building, wind from a first-floor classroom that had been converted into a smoking area blew up a stairwell and into her second-floor classroom.

Schiller said she complained to the school’s principal but nothing was done to resolve the problem. After about two years, she said, she could no longer walk long distances, and the walk from her car to the classroom left her tired and breathless. On the advice of her doctor, she temporarily moved to the Yucca Valley and was taking medication for her chronic asthma.

“My voice would be a croak. I would mouth the words and nothing would come out,” she said.

She requested and was granted a transfer to Frost Junior High School in Granada Hills. But after discovering similar problems with smoking there, she filed for sick leave. In October, 1989, she filed a workers’ compensation claim against the school district.

Schiller, who speaks to community groups about the dangers of secondhand smoke, performed as a singer years ago. Now, she said, she is lucky if she can make it through the day without using an inhaler.

Health