Woman who conspired to rob Family Dollar sentenced

Judge allows conditional discharge with three years of probation

A Pojoaque woman — whose former boyfriend brandished a BB gun while robbing the Family Dollar store where she worked last spring — received a suspended three-year prison sentence Friday after pleading guilty to robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery for helping the man plan the heist.

District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer also agreed to grant Cassandra Montoya, 28, a conditional discharge in the case, which means the two felony convictions will be wiped from her record if she completes three years of probation without incident.

The judge warned the young mother that she only gets one chance for a conditional discharge in her lifetime. “Do not blow this opportunity,” Marlowe Sommer said.

According to a statement of probable cause in the case, Montoya’s former boyfriend, Eric Martinez, entered the Family Dollar store where Montoya was working around 8 p.m. May 8, 2017, and pointed a black BB gun at a male cashier’s head, threatening to shoot him if he didn’t open his register and give Martinez the money.

The cashier complied, and Martinez made off with $159, according to the statement.

But witnesses provided his license place number to police, who pulled Martinez over a short time later in Española.

The currency taken from the Family Dollar store was in plain sight in the vehicle, according to the statement of probable cause, and police found a prescription pill bottle in the vehicle bearing Montoya’s name.

The statement says Santa Fe County sheriff ’s deputies later discovered that Montoya and Martinez had planned the robbery by text message earlier in the day while having a discussion about where to get money for Suboxone.

Montoya suggested to Martinez that he rob her while she was at work, and he agreed. Montoya said in a text to Martinez that if she was not at her register, he should just “take the kid’s money from his drawer,” according to the statement.

When Martinez arrived at the store, Montoya was out back.

In arguing that Montoya deserved a conditional discharge, her attorney, Michael Jones, told the judge she had gotten off track three years earlier, when she suffered a knee injury. She was prescribed narcotic painkillers, Jones said, and developed a dependence on opioids.

Jones said Montoya was in a Suboxone treatment program, had no prior criminal charges, had primary custody of her 10-year-old son and was working to improve her circumstances by studying business administration at Northern New Mexico College.

Montoya had originally been studying to become a teacher, Jones said, but had changed her major after being charged in the case because she feared it would be difficult for her to get a job teaching with the charges on her record, even with the conditional discharge.

Judge Sommer subjected Montoya to a drug test before agreeing to the deal and admonished her to make better choices going forward — for her own sake and the sake of her son.

Criminal charges against Martinez are still pending.