A registered nurse who pleaded guilty from stealing and using oxycodone from the Dedham rehab facility she worked for was sentenced to three years of probation.

U.S. District Court Judge Julia E. Kobick sentenced Jaclyn McQueen, 44, of Dedham on Wednesday to three years of probation on a single charge of tampering with a consumer product. McQueen was both charged and entered a plea deal on Dec. 7.

From February through May 2020, McQueen worked with long-term nursing home patients at Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Dedham during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

McQueen’s defense attorneys say that McQueen’s use of narcotics was to cope with the “previously unimaginable stressors of dealing with increasing numbers of COVID patients” as the disease “spread like wildfire” at the facility. While many nurses stopped working instead of risking exposure, the sentencing memo states, McQueen stayed and saw her work increase to 60 to 80 hours per week as her wards died and their family members weren’t even allowed entrance to say goodbye.

At least ten of Ms. McQueen’s patients died of COVID during her last two months of work. She contracted COVID herself in mid-April and was out for ten days. She went through opioid withdrawal while she was sick with COVID,” the memo states. “She promised herself that she would stay off opiates when she went back to work, but it was a promise that she was unable to keep.”

At first she just pocketed oxycodone pills that were to be discarded anyway, but then she needed more and started using a lot of the liquid medication and diluting the remnants with water to hide her actions, according to court documents.

She pleaded guilty upon being charged and a huge number of supportive letters show she has since improved her station and marked three years of sobriety on Sept. 5.