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Woman: Heroin 'ruined my life'
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Judge Elizabeth Kobly said Tuesday when she was 25 she was having the time of her life.
Not so for Sarah Capaldi, the woman the judge sentenced on misdemeanor drug-abuse instrument and drug-paraphernalia charges. She’s trying to break a heroin addiction.
Judge Kobly gave Capaldi, 25, of Owsley Road, McDonald, an 18-month probation that calls for treatment, counseling and random drug testing. If she fails the probation, the judge said she will impose a 90-day jail sentence.
Capaldi said she has been addicted to heroin since she was 22.
The judge asked why she even started in the first place.
“I have no answer to that,” Capaldi said. “I was hanging around with the wrong people.”
Capaldi said her decision to begin using the drug is the worst she has ever made.
“It has definitely ruined my life,” Capaldi said. “If I could go back, I’d change it all.”
Her attorney, Rhys Cartwright-Jones, asked for an intensive period of probation for Capaldi. He said she has been drug free for several weeks and would have passed a drug screen if she was tested Tuesday.
He also said she has stayed drug free despite the death of her father just over three weeks ago.
Capaldi told the judge she had tried to break her addiction before, but had relapsed. She also said she had just gotten out of prison in January and had served several stints in the Trumbull County Jail.
“I don’t want to go back,” Capaldi said.
In April 2013, court records from Trumbull County Common Pleas Court show Capaldi received five years’ probation after she pleaded guilty to two counts of burglary. In April 2014, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison after she violated her probation.
In the city case, she was a passenger in a car that was pulled over for a traffic violation at Glenwood and LaClede avenues on the South Side. In her purse, police found a burnt spoon and a syringe.
When asked by Judge Kobly about her future, Capaldi said she plans to live with her mother and take care of her and try to get a job. The judge told her to take advantage of the break she was given because there will be no second chance in her courtroom.
“I don’t know you at all,” Judge Kobly said. “And if I were you, I’d want it to stay that way.”