A Fort Bragg woman was sentenced to a year in federal prison last week for tampering with mail containing prescription medication and vape products, federal prosecutors said.

Last week, Carrie Wallace pleaded guilty in April to using her position as a U.S. Postal Service employee to gain access to and then steal mail containing prescription medications and vaping products, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California said.

Wallace targeted packages sent by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to its patients because they often contained narcotic medications, according to federal prosecutors.

Wallace cut into the packages, opened the prescription bottles, stole the medication and then replaced it with over-the-counter pills, retaped the packages and placed them back in the mail stream to be delivered to the intended recipients.

Multiple veteran victims took the tampered medication, putting them at risk of injury from taking incorrectly dispensed drugs. Many of the victims experienced extreme pain, increased agitation, anger and other mental health symptoms, federal prosecutors said.

Katy St. Clair got her start in journalism by working in the classifieds department at the East Bay Express during the height of alt weeklies, then sweet talked her way into becoming staff writer, submissions editor, and music editor. She has been a columnist in the East Bay Express, SF Weekly, and the San Francisco Examiner. Starting in 2015, she begrudgingly scaled the inverted pyramid at dailies such as the Vallejo Times-Herald, The Vacaville Reporter, and the Daily Republic. She has her own independent news site and blog that covers the delightfully dysfunctional town of Vallejo, California, where she also collaborates with the investigative team at Open Vallejo. A passionate advocate for people with developmental disabilities, she serves on both the Board of the Arc of Solano and the Arc of California. She lives in Vallejo.