CHEYENNE (WNE) — Almost 24 years ago, Senaida Nava was facing a tough legal situation.

In 1997, a jury found her guilty of aiding and abetting the delivery of marijuana. Around the same time, she also pleaded guilty to two felony counts of misrepresentation to receive food stamps and other forms of government assistance.

But Nava didn’t stick around to hear her sentence.

Instead, she fled Cheyenne with her two small children and started a new life in Arizona, where she lived — knowing there was a warrant out for her arrest — until this year.

Several months ago, Nava returned to Wyoming to face her convictions.

“I am here before your court today to do what I should have done 24 years ago,” an emotional Nava told Laramie County District Court Judge Thomas Campbell during a virtual sentencing hearing Monday afternoon.

“I take full responsibility for the choices I made, and I will not make any excuses for those choices,” she said.

According to court documents, at the time Nava committed the crimes, she was a young mother in an unhealthy relationship with her kids’ father, who was later imprisoned on drug-related charges, “which contributed to [her] poor decision making.”

Nava, according to court documents, has not received “so much as a parking ticket” since her felony convictions. She started her own cleaning business and helped send her kids to college, but did not have a bank account or obtain a driver’s license to avoid detection by authorities.

Campbell ordered Nava to serve three to five years of supervised probation and pay $15,489 in restitution.