SAN DIEGO -- A woman accused of poisoning her Marine husband in February 2002 paid $5,400 for breast augmentation surgery several weeks after he died, an office manager for the plastic surgeon testified Tuesday.

Cynthia Sommer, 33, is charged with murder and special circumstance allegations of murder by poison and murder for financial gain in the death five years ago of her 23-year-old husband, Sgt. Todd Sommer.

Prosecutors theorize that the defendant poisoned her spouse with arsenic at their home at Miramar so she could collect a $250,000 military life insurance payout.

Prosecutors said Sommer used some of the money to throw wild parties at the residence in the months after her husband died.

Betsy Walker, the office manager for Dr. Scott Miller, of La Jolla, testified that Sommer came by herself to an initial consultation on breast implants on Feb. 8, 2002. The defendant wrote a personal check for the breast augmentation surgery on April 4,2002 and had the procedure done on April 18, 2002, Walker testified.

Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn told jurors in her opening statement that the victim became sick a week before his death, and the only people near him besides his wife were the couple's infant son and her three children from a previous marriage.

The victim's death was originally classified as resulting from natural causes, but a subsequent test in 2003 for heavy metals found lethal levels of arsenic in his kidneys and liver, Gunn told the jury.

The prosecutor called the odorless, colorless arsenic "the perfect poison."

In his opening statement, defense attorney Robert Udell said there would be no evidence presented at the trial that connects his client to arsenic.

After a failed marriage that produced three children, Cynthia Sommer met the "man of her dreams" and married Todd Sommer in 1999, Udell said. He said evidence in the trial would show that his client's "goal in life was to be the wife of a Marine."

The attorney said fellow Marines who accompanied the victim on a Feb. 8, 2002, trip to El Centro said he ate some egg rolls on the way home, which Udell suggested were the cause of Todd Sommer's illness and subsequent death.

Udell said his client did not benefit financially from her husband's death and, in fact, lost benefits when he died.

But Gunn told jurors that although the defendant displayed an appropriate response when she called 911 the morning the victim collapsed in their bedroom, she made an unusual comment to one of the emergency responders as they took her lifeless husband to the hospital.

"She said, `We joked about the life insurance policy, but I never thought I'd actually see it,'" the prosecutor said.

When an official spoke to the defendant at the hospital, she asked, "Am I going to have to give back his bonus?" according to the prosecutor.

Sommer told agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service that her husband got "violently ill" 10 days before his death.

She told investigators that the Marine sought treatment, eventually recovered and went back to work but complained the night before he died that his heart was fluttering, according to Gunn.

The day after Todd Sommer died, his wife got a $6,000 death gratuity payment from the military, and a month later, she received more than $250,000 from his military life insurance policy, the prosecutor said.

In 2001, the military turned down the defendant's application for a loan because they said she wasn't living within the family's means, Gunn said.

A trust fund in Todd Sommer's name was also drained by Jan. 31, 2002, the prosecutor said.

The defendant lied when she said her husband went with her to the Feb. 8 appointment with the plastic surgeon, the prosecutor said.

Two months after his death, the defendant started a relationship with a new boyfriend, Gunn told the jury.

Sommer moved to Palm Beach County, Fla., where she was arrested last year and extradited back to San Diego.

She faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

The prosecution was expected to call more witnesses Wednesday.