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RICHARD RAEKEJill Soler's year in jail is to be followed by a residential treatment program, house arrest and drug offender probation.
NEW PORT RICHEY - After high school teacher and swimming coach Jill Soler was arrested for robbing a bank three days before Christmas, things began making sense to her family.
"We're just now starting to piece things together throughout her life," Soler's father, Llewellyn Spalding, said at her sentencing for robbery Friday.
Her sister, who did not attend the hearing, typed up a timeline of Soler's life for the court. With it, Soler's mental health problems appeared clearer to Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Michael Andrews. When she was younger, there were charges for petty crimes such as shoplifting and bad checks.
But by many accounts, Soler had grown into an upstanding mother of two girls and a revered educator and coach. An addiction to prescription painkillers caused her life to spiral downward in the last few years.
"I'm inclined to believe that what you really need is mental health treatment," Andrews said. "Nevertheless the crime deserves punishment."
Soler, who had pleaded guilty, received a year in the Pasco County Jail followed by a residential treatment program for a year, one year of house arrest and five years of drug offender probation. She received credit for the six months she has spent in jail since her arrest.
The family asked for house arrest and outpatient treatment. Prosecutors asked for 18 months in prison followed by drug offender probation.
"There's no way to say I'm sorry," Soler, 40, told the court. Looking at the choices that led her to rob a bank on Dec. 22, she added, "I can try to forgive myself someday, but I can never forget."
Just after 1 p.m., Soler entered the Republic Bank in Holiday dressed as a man, wearing a knit cap on her head and bandages on her face. She handed the teller a note, telling her to keep her head down, put the money in the bag and be quiet.
Then she got in a gray Kia Sephia and fled south on U.S. 19. The car stopped a half-mile south of U.S. Alt. 19, and Soler got out holding fistfuls of cash. All of the money was recovered.
The driver sped off. Police say her husband, Edgar Soler, was at the wheel. He has pleaded not guilty to robbery.
At Dunedin High School Jill Soler taught students with emotional problems and coached the boys and girls swimming teams. The St. Petersburg Times twice named her the Pinellas girls swimming coach of the year in the 1990s.
While breaking up a fight between students in 1998, Soler injured her shoulder and began taking pain medications. Although surgery alleviated the pain, she was hooked. And subsequent health problems surfaced.
She resigned from Dunedin High School in 2000 but was rehired to teach special education the next year. The school did not renew her contract at the end of the 2001-2002 school year after students and staff said Soler began taking pain medications in front of them.
Her first marriage disintegrated and her ex-husband took custody of the girls. She began seeing a psychiatrist to deal with a childhood rape and taking drugs to deal with her depression, she told the Times in January.
Soler met her new husband, Edgar Soler, last June. They were broke and living in a Dunedin motel when she proposed a bank robbery, she said in January.
On Friday, she told the court, "There might be hope for me to change, and I truly want that opportunity."
- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report.