AUBURN — By all accounts, Casandra Lawrence was a devoted mother and wife who worked hard and coped well with the daily stresses of life until age 30.

That all changed when her husband, who physically abused her, got himself and her hooked on heroin after returning from the Iraq War, Lawrence’s attorney, Donald Hornblower, told Chief Justice Roland Cole in Androscoggin County Superior Court on Thursday.

Cole sentenced Lawrence, 34, of Auburn to spend no more than the 28 days she’d already served in Androscoggin County Jail after her arrest in 2014.

“It’s a dilemma,” he said, “because her conduct clearly calls for a longer jail sentence.”

After drying out behind bars, Lawrence has remained drug-free for the past 18 months, Hornblower told Cole.

“This opiate and heroin epidemic — it really is an epidemic — in this state and this community has to be a concern of every citizen and parent and grandparent that it could potentially happen to their children,” Cole said. He tells defendants who are heroin addicts — some of them college students — who appear before his bench: “You are going to die if you don’t stop using.”

One woman who came before him overdosed twice in a single day and received a lifesaving injection of Narcan each time, he said.

“They clearly don’t get it or the addiction is driving them so they can’t control it,” he said.

He told Lawrence she was lucky that her sale of heroin to a woman didn’t end in death.

“You could have killed that woman,” he said, “in which case you’d be facing a manslaughter or a homicide charge. Thank God that didn’t happen.”

In Lawrence’s case, the fear of losing her children and returning to jail provided the motivation to keep her off drugs for a year and a half, Cole said.

“You have done a great job to this point in time,” he told Lawrence. “You have to continue to do that” or she might end up serving the nearly five years of her sentence that was suspended.

Prosecutors said Lawrence sold heroin laced with fentanyl, a narcotic painkiller, to a 23-year-old woman from Brunswick who overdosed on Oct. 26, 2014, at about 4:30 p.m. in Durham. The woman was given Narcan by Lisbon emergency services.

Narcan is the commercial name for nalaxone, which is used to counter the effects of opioids such as heroin.

Police pulled over a car on Canal Street in Lisbon. Lisbon emergency workers responded to administer the drug after they learned the woman had apparently overdosed on heroin and was unresponsive.

The woman’s condition improved immediately and she was taken by ambulance to Mid Coast Hospital in Brunswick for further treatment.

Other people in the car that the victim had been driving had placed an emergency medical call from the parking lot of the Congregational Church in Durham.

One of the occupants of the car gave police a sample of the drug the woman had taken. A field test of the substance confirmed it was heroin.

Police learned the Brunswick woman had driven to a convenience store and gas station in Durham to meet with a drug dealer who sold her $70 worth of heroin. One of the car’s occupants said she had accompanied the Brunswick woman in an effort to keep her from driving while under the influence of the heroin.

The Brunswick woman had identified her drug connection as “Casey,” who was later identified as Lawrence.

Lawrence was charged with aggravated trafficking of scheduled drugs, a Class B felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

On that charge, she agreed to a five-year sentence with all but nine months suspended. She was given the opportunity to pitch before a judge the case of why all five years of that sentence should be suspended. Hornblower successfully made that argument Thursday.

Lawrence also was charged with misdemeanor possession and pleaded guilty. The judge ordered a concurrent 28-day sentence on that charge.

Lawrence told the judge Thursday that she was not the same person she was when she was arrested.

“Getting arrested saved my life,” she said, explaining that it had forced her to kick her addiction.

“My life had definitely spiraled out of control,” she said.

She said she was “very sorry for what happened” to the victim, who also was her friend.

“I never meant for anything bad to happen to anyone,” she said.

Since her arrest, Lawrence has gotten an apartment and a job and cares for her children, ages 7 and 12. She is divorced.

Assistant Attorney General Johanna Gauvreau told Cole that Lawrence deserved to spend nine months of the five-year sentence in jail.

She said Lawrence was a drug trafficker who sold drugs to someone while knowing the overdose danger the drugs posed. She had been on bail for felony drug possession at the time, Gauvreau said.

“She needs to be held accountable for her actions,” Gauvreau said.

Hornblower said after the sentencing hearing that Cole recognized the fact that Lawrence took responsibility for her actions and regretted the decisions that led to her arrest.

He said the domestic violence that she suffered at the hands of her now-ex-husband pushed her to the point that “she drifted off into a world of drugs.”

Lawrence will be on probation for two years during which time she’ll be prohibited from having alcohol and illegal drugs and can be searched at random and tested for them. She also must undergo treatment and therapy for substance abuse.

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