A YOUNG air hostess who turned to crime after her life fell apart was yesterday jailed for two years for storing drugs for a dealer.

Rebecca Allan had left school with good exam results and worked as a junior manager with a train company before she landed her dream job with British Airways.

The 22-year-old had also set up home with her partner in Ingleby Barwick, near Stockton, Teesside.

But she was forced to leave her London-based job through ill health after her relationship came to an end, and she moved back to her home town of Darlington.

A court heard how she met former school friends and, because she was out of work, agreed to store ecstasy tablets for one of them in return for a few pills for herself.

Allan was caught when police pulled her over in her Rover convertible for a routine stop and found 23 tablets in her handbag.

Paul Cleasby, prosecuting, said officers searched her house in Fairfield Street and found a further 798 pills in bags under her bed.

She admitted possessing a class A drug with intent to supply, possessing a class A drug on June 8, and possessing a class A drug with intent to supply between January 1 and June 8, last year.

She told police she had stored ecstasy tablets for the same man, who she refused to name after she said she was threatened, on one other occasion before she was stopped by police on June 8.

Mr Cleasby said Allan told police she had received 1,000 pills and was told to divide them into bags of 100, but was allowed 30 for herself in return for storing them.

Mr Cleasby said: "Police asked why she had been chosen and she said it was because she was daft enough to do it and unlikely to arouse anyone's suspicion. She said if she was daft enough to do it, she would have to take the consequences."

Dan Cordey, in mitigation, said: "She was naive enough and stupid enough to allow herself to be used."

Mr Cordey described Allan as "an articulate, intelligent young woman who conducted her life in an exemplary manner" before she was coerced into storing the drugs.

He said she was threatened not to identify the dealer, who received stashes of 20,000 at a time from Liverpool. He said her car was vandalised, then stolen and left burnt out after she was arrested.

Judge Guy Whitburn said he had a responsibility to jail Allan, but said it was his duty to make the sentence as short as possible because of her "impeccable" background.

He said: "You are the ideal cloak of respectability for a drug dealer who was not a small-scale drug dealer but a large-scale drug dealer.

"He needed people like you to store those drugs because it is rare indeed that any large-scale dealer is either caught with drugs or money on him or her."