A former manager at More restaurant in Oakland who had worked there for decades was sentenced yesterday to 26 to 52 months in prison for embezzling nearly a half million dollars from the family business.

Tina Marie Horn, 46, of Oakland, was ordered to pay the More family $400,624 in restitution, continue drug and alcohol treatment, and serve five years' probation.

As Common Pleas Judge Randal B. Todd rendered his sentence, restaurant owner Elisa More, who said she had considered Ms. Horn "like family" during her 28 years of employment, burst into tears.

When the defendant left the room in handcuffs, escorted by a sheriff's deputy, her mother collapsed onto the courtroom floor and was taken away on a stretcher minutes later. Before that commotion, a tipstaff had asked the defendant's sister to leave the courtroom because she was laughing and making comments to the victims.

Ms. Horn pleaded guilty in April to two counts of theft by deception for appropriating cash and checks from the business between 1998 and 2003. An investigation by the Allegheny County district attorney's office reported that the missing money amounted to nearly $486,000.

Defense attorney Stanley Greenfield asked yesterday that the defendant be allowed to continue intensive drug treatment and be put under court monitoring rather than be sentenced to prison.

Prosecutor Debra Barnisin-Lange urged the judge to give Ms. Horn a prison sentence.

The More family first confronted Ms. Horn in December 2002, after it received two anonymous phone calls about the financial scams. Ms. Horn said she could not repay in cash, but offered several pieces of jewelry as repayment.

When Ms. More rejected that offer, the defendant's husband sold the jewelry and gave the family $11,000 in restitution. The next year, he paid them another $5,600.

Ms. More said she was disappointed with the sentence given, that the defendant had been welcomed into the family since she was 14 and began checking coats at the restaurant. She said the missing money has made it impossible for her husband, Luciano, to retire from his job as chef.

Mostly, Ms. More was upset because, after all the deception, "she never apologized."