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CHRISTIANSBURG -- Each time tax technician Tammie Lawson took money from the Montgomery County treasurer's office to pay a house or vehicle bill, she would try to pay it back.

But it got to a point at which Lawson, who had filed for bankruptcy, couldn't pay back what she had taken.

Lawson, 38, was charged in October with one felony count of embezzlement and acknowledged at her sentencing hearing Thursday in Montgomery County Circuit Court that she could have been charged with many more counts.

She admitted to taking about $8,500 from the county in an 18-month period that ended in September 2007, when she left her job as a senior tax technician. She pleaded guilty to the embezzlement charge in February and was sentenced Thursday to two years of probation.

Before the judge ruled, Lawson was asked by her attorney, Jimmy Turk, if she would like to say anything to the five members of the treasurer's office who attended the hearing.

Lawson turned to them from the witness stand and began to cry.

"I'm very sorry for everything I've done," she said. "It's been a humiliation for y'all, I know."

She went on to say she misses and loves them.

Montgomery County Commonwealth's Attorney Brad Finch asked retired Circuit Court Judge Colin Campbell to sentence Lawson to jail time.

"She was entrusted with a great deal of public money ... and she violated that trust," Finch said.

He told the judge he wanted to send a message not only to Lawson "but to any other person who might consider stealing from the public in such a high degree of trust."

Turk asked the judge to consider that Lawson has paid back all the money she took from the office and that she never used the money for "luxury items."

"She was making payments for necessities," he said.

"What I did was totally wrong," Lawson said after Campbell asked if she wanted to say anything else. "I live with humiliation every day. It's hard for me to face people."

Campbell said that although public servants are held to a higher standard than others, it weighed very heavily with him that Lawson was making efforts to pay the money back before she got caught stealing it.

"It's not very often the court sees someone that's attempting to make things right before they are discovered," he said.

He sentenced Lawson to five years in prison, all suspended as long as she doesn't get into trouble with the law again.

Staff from the treasurer's office declined to comment after the hearing.