By Laura Beth Ellis and Betsy Cribb
No good deed goes unpunished, says Rockbridge County jail inmate Pamela Sibold-Sensabaugh.
Sibold-Sensabaugh, 50, of Goshen, Va., says she let her long-time friend April Burk stay with her for a couple of nights in March.
“I nurture (people) that are down and out and my door’s always open for anything like that … it gets me in trouble,” she says.
Sibold-Sensabaugh says Burk did drugs, flooded her bathroom, and stole money and jewelry–pushing her to her limit.
Armed with her husband’s 22-magnum gun, Sibold-Sensabaugh fired several shots at Burk as she drove away with her father and brother.
For many years, Sibold-Sensabaugh says she has seen counselors about bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Now in jail, she says she is visited by a psychiatrist once a month and takes medicine three times a day.
When not on her medicine, Sibold-Sensabaugh says she gets depressed.
“The schizophrenia is what’s hard in here,” she says. “It’s like somebody talking in the background. I mean, it would drive you insane.”
The only drugs Sibold-Sensabaugh says she uses now are her prescriptions for her bipolar disorder and schizophrenia conditions.
Before she knew about her illnesses, she says she took other drugs.
Sibold-Sensabaugh was a truck driver for 10 years, and she says she took amphetamines to stay awake.
“It was more like a thing where you did it for sleep, to keep you awake, but you also did it to fit in with the crowd,” she says.
As a teenager, she says she hung out with the wrong crowd but never tried drugs.
“I skipped too much school, “ laughs Sibold-Sensabaugh. “I didn’t have the grades for college.”
After high school, she says she worked for four years at a Fairfield truck stop. Then she got a job as a truck driver.
Sibold-Sensabaugh says truck driving was an obvious occupation for her.
“We’ve always been in racing, and we’ve always been into tractor-trailers. We’ve always been into Harley Davidsons,” she says, referring to her family.
She says she enjoyed life as a truck driver.
“I always had friends. I had a regular route that I did with regular people.”
All she says she has left now are her husband and two pit bulls, and she vows she will not take in any more “strays.”
“Now I have no friends,” she says. “This was the last straw. I’ll be a cold, hard stone, just cold hearted now.”