SAN DIEGO -- A woman who escaped a Detroit prison camp 32 years ago and fled to Southern California, where she married and raised three children, was back in custody Wednesday following her arrest last week at her Carmel Valley home.

Marie Walsh, 53, was known as Susan Lefevre in 1975 when she was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison for conspiracy and violation of drug laws, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

Agents tracked Walsh down last week after authorities in her former home state received an anonymous tip about the life she had been leading since going on the lam more than three decades ago.

Walsh was arrested and booked into Las Colinas women's lockup in Santee, where she is awaiting extradition to Michigan to serve the rest of her sentence.

In jailhouse interviews, Walsh -- who initially tried to deny her past when confronted by federal officers on Thursday -- described the offense for which she was convicted as a low-level crime.

"It was a couple hundred dollars worth of drugs, a transaction that my friend did, and I was there in the car," she told a local television station.

Walsh said she "just got in with the wrong crowd" as a teenager and was "experimenting" with drugs when she was arrested for allegedly dealing cocaine and heroin in 1975.

After a year at a detention camp, Walsh managed to escape by climbing a fence.

"And my grandfather was waiting ... a few blocks away," she told the news station. "And the helicopters were overhead. I thought maybe they would shoot at me, and I just really didn't care. I had to get out of there. And it was a very wrong thing to do."

Walsh, who has lived in Carmel Valley for 10 years, said her family knew nothing of her former identity and fugitive status prior to her arrest.

Walsh characterized her reformed, family-oriented ways as grounds for mercy and lenience when she faces justice again in the Midwest.

"I've been through 30 years of paying off a debt (to society)," she said. "I hope that there's some consideration for the fact that I did turn my life around."