1410 WIZM

A runaway mother from La Crosse County will get a chance to return to the lives of her children...but first, she'll have to spend a year in jail.

Gretchen Kammel will serve the jail time as part of a five-year probation sentence for taking her kids with her in a custody battle years ago. Kammel skipped the original sentencing in 1998, and left her three children behind until this year. Two of the grown children asked a judge today to let their mother avoid jail.

Kammel apologized to her kids and their two fathers. Judge Ramona Gonzalez said that she made a mistake years ago by releasing Kammel from jail...not realizing that Kammel would disappear for over a decade.