Mother Who Sold Cocaine to Pay Bills Is Sentenced : Justice: Police arrested her after her daughter showed a packet of drugs to a teacher. Despite a plea for leniency, she gets six months in jail.

A North Hollywood woman convicted of possessing cocaine for sale after her 8-year-old daughter brought some of the drug to school to show a teacher was sentenced Thursday to six months in jail.

Carmen Lourdes Garcia, 31, was also ordered by Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz to pay a $150 fine or perform 35 hours of community service for possessing approximately 14 grams of cocaine packaged for sale.

Stoltz dropped an additional count of felony child endangering.

If Garcia violates the terms of her probation, she could be sentenced to four years in prison.

Deputy Public Defender Barbara Duey asked Stoltz for leniency. Duey said Garcia is a struggling single mother who sold cocaine because she could not pay her bills despite working overtime at two jobs. Garcia has no prior criminal record and is remorseful, Duey told Stoltz.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert J. Schuit agreed with that assessment but argued that Garcia deserved jail time because she had “abrogated her responsibility as a parent” and endangered her daughter by selling cocaine.

Garcia was arrested Oct. 19 after her 8-year-old daughter brought some white powder to a teacher at Oxnard Street School in North Hollywood, saying she suspected it was a drug. The girl said her mother had numerous similar packets hidden in shoes in her bedroom closet, the probation report said.

School officials notified police, who tested the substance and found it to be cocaine. Garcia was arrested near the school as she arrived to pick up her daughter, police said. A dozen more packets of cocaine were found in a hall closet, the probation report said.

Garcia is quoted in the probation report as saying that she showed her daughter the cocaine, warning that it was dangerous and she should not touch it.

Garcia pleaded guilty to one count of possessing cocaine for sale on Nov. 1 before her preliminary hearing was to begin. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop the felony child endangering count, Schuit said.

The daughter is living with her father, the probation report said.

It was the second such incident in the San Fernando Valley in two years. Maria Christina Torres of Topanga Canyon was sentenced to three years in prison last year after her 7-year-old daughter found a golf ball-size chunk of cocaine in a backpack she took to school.