By Mark LaFlamme,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Months before Lisa Hanson was released from prison last year, she predicted she would eventually go back for using drugs.

On Wednesday, the 37-year-old Blake Street woman was arrested after police said she tested positive for crack cocaine.

Hanson was arrested at 2:15 p.m. at Pine and Horton streets and charged with violating probation. She could now be ordered to serve the remainder of her original 12-year sentence – all but five suspended – from a 1997 conviction for trafficking in cocaine.

Hanson, the mother of eight children, was chronicled in a Sun Journal series in April in which she was described as the “face of crack.” At the time, she was at the tail end of a five-year prison sentence at the Maine Correctional Center.

During a prison interview, Hanson told a reporter she had been in and out of prison over the past 15 years after six convictions for drug trafficking. And she was not convinced she would steer clear of crack once she was released from prison.

“When you’ve been out on the street as long as I have, there’s not a lot you have to do,” Hanson said during the interview. “It’s like riding a bike.”

In April, Hanson was serving the end of a prison term that should have seen her out years ago. She was convicted in March 1997 of four counts of aggravated trafficking of cocaine and sentenced to 12 years in prison with all but five years suspended, followed by four years of probation.

She has been released from prison several times only to return shortly for violating her probation.

Her most common offenses: testing positive for cocaine and refusing urine tests.

When the Sun Journal story ran in April, the reaction from the public was immediate. Dozens of people wrote letters or called the paper to voice their disgust that a mother of eight was featured as a drug user, especially since Hanson admitted to using crack at times while she was pregnant.

Hanson’s youngest child is four, her oldest 22.

When she was freed in September, Hanson was ordered to steer clear of drugs and to submit to random testing at the request of her probation officer. When she was given such a test on Wednesday, police said she tested positive for cocaine.

“When you get really, really high or greedy, you get sloppy,” Hanson said in the April interview. “You get stupid.”

Hanson was not charged with any additional drug offenses Wednesday. A seventh such conviction could garner her 15 years in prison.

Instead, Hanson will appear in court later this week on the probation violation. If she is found guilty, she will likely be sent back to the Maine Correctional Center.

Hanson remained at the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn Wednesday night without bail.