HAW RIVER - Meg Scott Phipps, the former North Carolina agriculture commissioner and fallen heir of a political dynasty, left prison Monday with no apologies for the scandal that put her away for more than three years.

Phipps, 51, walked out of a federal prison camp in Alderson, W.Va., Monday morning and drove to Greensboro, where she visited her parole officer to pick up an ankle bracelet for the four months she'll spend under electronic house arrest. From Greensboro, she headed to her home in the Alamance County town of Haw River, where a barbecue dinner was planned with her husband, Robert, their two teenage children, her mother and her father, former North Carolina Gov. Bob Scott.

Phipps said she has no regrets other than missing out on her children's teenage years. She referred to the three Duke University lacrosse players who were exonerated earlier this month when N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper declared they were falsely accused of raping a woman at an off-campus party.

"The only other regret I have is that I haven't been able to make the same speech that the Duke lacrosse young men got to make," she said.

Phipps stopped short of saying she was unfairly targeted. But her words Monday differed greatly from a remark she made in 2003 after a jury found her guilty on state charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

"I am truly sorry that I have brought this sadness and this grief to my family, but also to the people of North Carolina," she said then in a Wake County courtroom. "I do accept full responsibility for my actions."

Her sentence of four years came after she entered guilty pleas on charges of extortion, mail fraud and conspiracy for her role in the thousands of dollars in illegal cash contributions that state and federal prosecutors said she took from vendors for the State Fair in exchange for favorable contracts.

Prosecutors at the time said Phipps "literally sold her office." On Monday, U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding issued a short statement on Phipps' homecoming: "Ms. Phipps has paid her debt to society, and we look forward to her returning to her community as a productive citizen."

A new chapter

Phipps left the public eye after admitting her guilt after months of staunchly claiming that she wasn't privy to the bribery.

On Monday, an energetic Phipps, who lost 45 pounds during her more than three years of incarceration, spoke freely with reporters gathered outside the probation office in downtown Greensboro. She displayed the ankle bracelet that she'll wear night and day until Aug. 24, when she's expected to be taken off the electronic monitoring program and placed on two years of supervised probation.

Phipps described the three years she spent teaching her fellow inmates and said she looks forward to teaching Christian education at her church, the Hawfields Presbyterian Church in Mebane.

"This morning I woke up in a prison bunk bed, and tonight I'll be at my home with my children," Phipps said.

Supportive neighbors

Yellow ribbons were tied to her neighbors' mailboxes on the rural stretch of road in Haw River in Alamance County.

Next door to the home where Phipps will be under house arrest, she'll look out onto what used to be family land. After she was charged, she and her husband sold 206 acres of the dairy farm where her father, Bob Scott, and grandfather, W. Kerr Scott, both North Carolina governors, once lived.

Thirty-five houses have already gone up in the 755-home development. Phipps was kept apprised of the changes by neighbors and friends who sent her pictures of the changing landscape, said Hal Byrd, one of the developers of the Old Fields subdivision.

Support was strong for Phipps during the time she spent in prison, but talk didn't often rest on the criminal charges that got her there, he said.

"The community didn't discuss that," he said. "They accepted the fact that that was the hand she was dealt."

Less than a mile away, Janet Evans hung a yellow ribbon outside her home, and pulled out a five-foot wooden caroler from her stored Christmas decorations and hung a sign -- "Welcome Home Meg" -- on it.

Evans, who attends the same church as Phipps, just wanted to be friendly.

"I wanted her to see it when she drives by," Evans said.

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)