Westmoreland Drug Court graduates say program changed their lives

Lindsie Spillar’s drug addiction had gotten so bad she couldn’t help herself as she walked through security while entering the Westmoreland County Courthouse more than three years ago. She stole a purse just after it was checked through an X-Ray machine.

Addicted to heroin and methamphetamine since her teens, the now 26-year-old Greensburg woman has turned her life around.

Spillar returned to the courthouse last week to graduate from the county’s drug court program.

“(The drugs) forced me to do things I would never have done,” Spillar said. “I never thought I would get to this point.”

Spillar has been sober for more than 200 days and recently became one of two women to graduate from the two-year drug court, which mixes judicial oversight, rehabilitation, counseling and support as an alternative to incarceration.

The May graduation was the 13th since the drug court program was launched in 2015. Spillar, along with Laura Dick, 49, formerly of North Huntingdon, became its 64th and 65th graduates.

Both women faced potential jail sentences before entering the program.

Dick, who said she has battled addiction since the age of 17, faced up to five years in prison after her last shoplifting arrest in July 2019.

“It was 30 years of jail, judges and court. The last time I was arrested — exhausted doesn’t describe it. I was hopeless,” Dick said.

She has been drug free now for nearly two years.

Common Pleas Court Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio, one of the judges who preside over the county’s drug court, said the changes in both women during the course of the program has been dramatic.

“You are not the same women than when you came into the program,” Bilik-DeFazio said.

Dick said drug court became the driving force to turn her life around. “This is the only thing that changed my life.”