BANGOR – When she was 2 years old, Wilhelmina Elodie Anastasi, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, was dragged from a raging fire that consumed a lighthouse off Grand Manan Island near the Down East coast. Her grandmother perished in an effort to save her, according to Anastasi’s attorney.

Decades later, Anastasi’s son was found dead of a suspected drug overdose. He was 34.

Anastasi, now 66, was sentenced to 12 months in prison Wednesday for conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute marijuana after admitting she acted as a drug courier. The sentencing took place at federal court with U.S. District Judge George Z. Singal presiding.

The tragedies in her life have produced a woman who has made unsound decisions and who apparently has a diminished capacity to understand the seriousness of her actions, according to her attorney, factors that weighed in her favor at an unusual sentencing hearing.

Arrested 18 months ago outside a motel room in Chula Vista, Calif., Anastasi was preparing to drive across the country to Boston to deliver more than 300 pounds of marijuana to a drug dealer there. She could have been sentenced to 80 months in prison, according to her attorney. She faced a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison for the offense.

In a relatively rare decision, the federal judge ordered a lighter than usual sentence for Anastasi based on her age, the trauma that has defined her life, and other factors.

“She was used by the same crowd her [now deceased] son hung out with,” said attorney Kevin Barron of Ellsworth who represented Anastasi. “She wanted to somehow get nearer to her dead son,” Barron told the judge. He termed the case a “reverse sting.”

Residing in the coastal community of Hancock, Anastasi was identified in court documents as a drug courier. In addition to a possible long-term prison sentence she faced a possible $4 million fine.

A safety-valve provision in federal law was triggered in her case. The safety valve is aimed at preventing lengthy sentences for first-time nonviolent offenders.

Her attorney also succeeded in securing a downward departure for his client although the government, represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Wing, did not agree with the legal move. In this case Anastasi got a sentence one-quarter the length usually ordered for cases with comparable drug amounts involved.

At the hearing, a psychologist testified to facets of Anastasi’s emotional makeup that the judge apparently took to heart.

“The fact that you started making bad choices when your son died is belied by the fact that you used drugs – illegal drugs – in the past,” Singal said at the sentencing. Other people are “serving extraordinarily long sentences in federal prison today who had not as much involvement in drug … distribution as you did,” Singal said.

The judge said Anastasi’s “mental, emotional, family issues as well as your age, to some degree the diminished capacity together warrant some departure though no single characteristic would warrant a departure alone.”

Anastasi was indicted last summer in Southern California after her June 16, 1999, arrest. U.S. Customs agents had set up a “controlled” sale of marijuana to the woman who was identified as an associate of a Boston drug dealer they were investigating. The dealer’s name is Mark Curran, according to court papers. Information on Curran’s legal status could not be obtained Wednesday.

The case was transferred to Bangor after it was determined Anastasi’s home was in Maine.

During the controlled sale, Anastasi identified herself as “Billy Jo” to Special Agent Joe Rad of the U.S. Customs Service, according to a court paper. She gave Rad $9,000 in cash in exchange for six duffel bags filled with 309 pounds of marijuana, according to the government’s amended version of the offense that has been filed at the courthouse.

Anastasi reportedly told Rad that she had flown to California, buying an airline ticket with money that Curran had given her, and that she planned to drive back to Boston with the marijuana, a trip she figured would take five days, and to deliver it. She had been promised an undisclosed amount of money for making the delivery, possibly around $2,000, according to court records.

On July 7, 1999, a Southern California federal grand jury indicted her and she later pleaded guilty.

She is expected to serve her time in a minimum security facility.