"The headline this week called Ana Limbaring a thief. A 10-year prison sentence put the exclamation point on it.

But Limbaring's letter to the judge described a thief with another problem that had been tearing her apart. She said she was an addictive gambler whose embezzlement of $1.85 million from the Orange County Performing Arts Center over a five-year period had fed the beast. Her attorney said she lost most of the money at the Pechanga Casino in Temecula.

Bruce Roberts doesn't know Limbaring, but he certainly knows of people like her. He's the executive director of the California Council on Problem Gambling, and if Limbaring's life comes close to resembling the broad-strokes profile I asked Roberts to give of a troubled gambler, getting caught may have felt like a reprieve to her.

"We call it the hidden addiction," Roberts says, from his office on Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim. Besides showing no outward signs of addiction, the problem gambler "internalizes everything," Roberts says. "They feel there's no one to talk to. They're certain they can solve the problems themselves.""

Get the Story:
Dana Parsons: Again, Gambling Gets Out of Hand (The Los Angeles Times 3/29)
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