The radio reports Lois Fraley heard during the ordeal helped her get through.

NEW YORK (AP) – A prison guard held hostage in a watchtower by two inmates for 15 days says she thought she would die “from the moment they came in” and contemplated suicide during the ordeal.

Agreeing for the first time to have her name made public, Lois Fraley told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday that she was so fearful of the inmates that she considered herself dead.

“I said goodbye to everybody,” she said. “In the first few days, I separated myself from the family and just, there’s no way of explaining it. It’s hard.”

“I took my family for granted and I’ll never do that again.”

She was taken hostage with guard Jason Auch on Jan. 18 in a three-story guard tower at the Arizona state prison in Buckeye, outside Phoenix.

Auch was released Jan. 24. Fraley was released Feb. 1 when inmates Steven Coy, who grew up in Lewiston, Maine, and Ricky Wassenaar surrendered.

The men gave up only after officials agreed to transfer Coy to a prison in his native Maine, and Wassenaar to a prison in Wisconsin.

Coy, origninally from Lewiston, pleaded guilty last week to raping Fraley and a female kitchen worker at the prison. Wassenaar was indicted Friday on charges of sexually assaulting Fraley.

“Fortunately it (sexual assault) didn’t happen very often,” Fraley said Tuesday. “In the first day, and after that it was more mental and emotional abuse that went on.”

She said she thought she would die “from the moment they came in. They had no problem with killing us. In fact they wanted to kill at least five (guards.) They would be satisfied with two officers, they would prefer five.”

Even as she was walking free at the end, she said, she thought she might get shot.

Fraley also was interviewed Monday by Phoenix station KTAR-AM, which didn’t use her name. She said the radio reports she heard during her ordeal about how the community was supporting her helped her get through.

“There were numerous times when I thought about suicide,” Fraley told KTAR.

But every time she considered killing herself, she would hear that supporters were wearing ribbons and thinking about her. “I prayed so much. I was never a believer before. The prayers got me through this,” she said.

She also said that at one point, she could have slipped out of her handcuffs, grabbed a loaded shotgun and killed her captors, but she was stopped by Auch.

“I had leaned over to him and asked him, “Hey, I can slip off the handcuffs. Both inmates are asleep. I can take a shotgun and blow both of them away. It is already loaded,”‘ she said.

“He said, “No, don’t try it.’ The gun was about six to eight feet away. I think I could have made it. … They were both snoring, snoring up a storm.”

The guard said she is trying to recover from the ordeal.

“I have got so many mental issues right now,” she said. “I can start crying at any minute for the smallest things.”