A CARE worker who stole £1,000 from an 80-year-old pensioner she was looking after was jailed today for 14 months.

Tahra Gresty, who had run up £1,300 drug debts due to a cocaine addiction, sneaked into the disabled woman's home in Blackburn and stole her handbag without being spotted.

She then went on to try and get money paid into her bank account by using a couple of the pensioner's cheques.

But Preston Crown Court heard how her own father shopped her to police when he ‘smelled a rat’.

A cheque was yesterday given to repay the pensioner. But she was jailed after the judge said it was so serious a crime that only prison should follow.

Gresty, 22, of Tockholes Road, Darwen had been committed for sentencing to the crown court, having pleaded guilty at the magistrates court to burglary and fraud, with one offence taken into consideration.

The defendant went on to lose her job with Carewatch.

The victim, a woman living in the Wensley Fold area, needed to be on oxygen 24 hours a day. A carer would go to her home several times each day and, at the time of the offences, Gresty was employed as a carer.

Nigel Booth, prosecuting, said the defendant had been visiting the lady and caring for her in the weeks leading up to what happened.

One particular evening, the woman noticed that her handbag was missing. Around a thousand pounds cash was inside and a cheque book.

The following day, members of her family put a stop on the stolen cheque book.

Gresty tried to cash two cheques. On September 5 she had returned to a bank to try and withdraw money, but drew suspicion to herself.

She was arrested later that month.

At the time of the burglary, he said she was addicted to cocaine, using about £600 worth of the drug a week. She had run up a thousand pounds debt to her dealer.

Mr Booth told the court: "The victim says the hardest thing was the fact that someone caring for her had taken the items. She says the offences have left her not able to trust people like she did before.”

Gresty had no previous convictions.

Defence barrister Mr Richard Bennett said: "She is thoroughly and deeply ashamed of what she has done.”

Judge Norman Wright told her: "You must appreciate that this is a mean and despicable offence.”