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A former UPMC Altoona registered nurse will spend six months on house arrest with electronic monitoring to start what will be seven years of probation for stealing narcotic medication from the hospital.

Dena Jo Pacifico, 40, Altoona, was sentenced Friday in Blair County court where Judge Wade A. Kagarise decided against incarceration to address Pacifico’s guilty pleas to a drug-related felony and two related misdemeanor offenses.

“If I regret this sentence because you do something again, I will put you in a state prison,” Kagarise warned Pacifico as he prepared to impose her sentence.

Pacifico, who cried as she addressed the judge, said she no longer uses drugs and has been rebuilding her life.

“I’ve been doing everything I can so I never set foot in the courtroom again,” Pacifico said.

The state Attorney General’s office charged Pacifico in July 2021 based on an investigation that started in November 2020 after UPMC Altoona police were alerted to an empty Oxycodone package near a medication dispensing machine.

Criminal charges state that more empty packages were later found near that location on the same day and again three days later. Further investigation led to Pacifico, who said she took the Oxycodone to help her sleep at night. Court documents also indicate that she replaced the Oxycodone tablets with vitamin pills.

District Attorney Pete Weeks asked Kagarise for a sentence of 18 months to five years’ incarceration.

“She had a duty to care for her patients, and she breached that duty,” Weeks said. “Her patients needed pain relief … and they were getting Vitamin D.”

State College defense attorney Jason Dunkle asked for a probationary sentence. He said Pacifico’s guilty pleas addressed the loss of eight pills — a relatively minor cost to the hospital — at a time when Pacifico was dealing with personal problems and working 16 and 17 hour shifts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was the perfect storm of events and she broke,” Dunkle said.

Pacifico also spoke of the pandemic’s influence on her life.

“I was literally working under some of the most ridiculous conditions,” she told the judge.

Weeks countered those claims by referencing investigatory details identifying the loss of more than eight pills on several dates.

Kagarise, who said the sentence would focus on the theft of eight pills because that’s what Pacifico pleaded guilty to, criticized her behavior.

“Messing around with medication in a hospital is not something that can be tolerated, that society can tolerate,” the judge said. “Patients not getting pain medication, that’s a risk … and this court looks at this conduct with dissatisfaction to say the least.”

The judge also recognized the pandemic’s impact on the nursing profession, but declined to see that as an excuse.

“You understand that other nurses lived through what you went through and didn’t do what you did,” Kagarise said.

Weeks said he was disappointed with the judge’s decision to impose a probationary sentence when the state sentencing guidelines call for incarceration.

“She stole a Schedule II narcotic and endangered her nursing license as well as the licenses of the other nurses she worked with,” Weeks said.

Dunkle indicated that Pacifico kept her nursing license after a review last year by the state licensing board. That may change because of her plea and conviction, Dunkle said in court, but she’s never going back to nursing.

Instead, Dunkle said his client remains focused on the business she started to support herself and her two children.

“She has a huge incentive to stay on the right path,” he said.