from www.chicagotribune.com – The woman accused of attacking a Gurnee police officer with a sex toy said she was acting in self-defense.

Carolee Bildsten, 57, was arrested in November after police said she raised a “clear, rigid feminine pleasure device” over her head and went at the officer.

“I got a little bit afraid,” she said during an interview Tuesday. “I got scared. And the only thing in my sock drawer besides my socks and my cash was a dildo.”

The officer was not injured, said Gurnee Police Cmdr. Jay Patrick.

And that’s because he wasn’t attacked, Bildsten contends.

Bildsten said she was lonely and hungry on Nov. 9, the day she went to Joe’s Crab Shack on Route 132. She ordered a glass of wine, and dinner. And then another glass of wine.

At the end of the meal, Bildsten said she reached into her pocket to grab her credit card – she’d walked to Joe’s and “wanted to travel light” without a purse – only to find it wasn’t there.

“I sheepishly told the bartender that I didn’t have any money with me but that I lived nearby, so I was going to run home and get money,” she said.

Bildsten went outside and waited for a taxi, but when the taxi didn’t show, she decided to walk, she said, despite having a broken foot at the time.

She got to about Great America, tripped over something, and fell down – which is where a police report indicated the officer involved in the incident found Bildsten lying in the grass.

“Partly, I was intoxicated, so that had something to do with it,” she said. “But I also had a broken foot, so I wasn’t walking real well.”

The officer told her to pay her Crab Shack bill or risk arrest, at which point he was “kind enough to take me home,” Bildsten said.

Once in the apartment on David Court, Bildsten went to her bedroom to get cash out of a sock drawer, she said.

“I’m counting my cash to make sure I take out enough, and the officer walks into my bedroom and startles me,” Bildsten said, adding that she had recently read an article about a Gurnee police officer who was convicted of sexual assault, which made her nervous.

“I don’t know, it was just this male police officer and me in the apartment, and he startled me,” she said.

Bildsten said she never attacked the officer with the sex toy. She just “instinctively raised it up in a defensive move.”

The officer walked over to her, grabbed her arm, and the toy fell to the ground. The officer then arrested Bildsten.

Bildsten said she intends to plead not guilty at a court hearing sheduled for Thursday at the Lake County courthouse in Waukegan.

“I did not assault him. I’m not guilty of that,” she said. “I simply was defending myself.”

Patrick said he couldn’t comment on the case, which is pending in court.

An avid golfer and fan of thoroughbred horseracing, Bildsten holds a degree from the University of Wisconsin. She spent much of her career as a dietician, then opened an ice cream shop near Lake Forest. She’s currently unemployed, and lives with her dog, a German shorthair pointer.

Bildsten is also an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous, she said.

“I’m working on improving my life to avoid any further police encounters,” she said.

Because she didn’t intend to dine-and-ditch at Joe’s Crab Shack, Bildsten said she sent a money order the next day to cover her bill. She said it was the first time she’d eaten at the restaurant in years, and a report that she had recently run out on a bill there was incorrect.

She called the whole incident humiliating.