New grad with unauthorized use of property

I need help I am a new grad and I am having a difficult time finding a job in Ohio. I was given a consent agreement because of a unauthorized use of property that happened 3 years ago. I plead no contest because I am a divorced mother with 3 children and I was in school at the time so I had no money to fight it. What happened was my friend and I were shopping at Kohls and they were having a big sale so ..... we had alot of items in our cart. We went to the register to pay and I had a few items that I bought my son previously that needed to be taken back. The girl at the register said that I could not return them there and needed to go to the back of the store to return them. My friend said "go ahead I will bring your stuff back so you can pay for it there". So she came back with my items; they were on top of her bags that she had paid for in the cart. So I paid for the items and we left the store. When we did security came out yelling at us to come back in the store, so we did. There were a few items in the bottom of the cart. They amounted to 30.00 and I spent 70.00 and my friend spent 90.00 so why would we steal 30.00 worth of stuff and still had money on us. This was not intentional but an accident. Thinking back now I should have lifted her bags out of the cart to make sure everything was out but I just didn't think to. Now I am paying for it big time. This happened before I was accepted to nursing school and to be accepted I had to do a FBI/BCI check and was accepted so why didn't anyone tell me that I may never work as a nurse because of this? Does anyone know what state would be easy on me? Where do they need nurses?