Some crime stories make you lose all hope and faith in humanity. Some crime stories make laugh until you can’t feel your extremities. This story is right in the middle of those two.

LAKE HARMONY, Pa. - A judge sentenced a woman to prison for making her 6-year-old daughter steal a volunteer fire company’s fundraising jar, a crime that netted the family $1.85.

Judith Weidner, 42, had told police she needed the change for gasoline, but in court she blamed a heroin addiction.

Judge David W. Addy sentenced Weidner on Monday to one to three years in prison for the January 2005 theft.

Security films show Weidner distracting a convenience store clerk while her daughter took a small fireman’s boot used to collect change for a volunteer fire company effort. The boot was later found in the trash at a car wash.

I don’t know what’s more pathetic: the fact that a mom made her kid steal a fundraising jar or the fact that the volunteer fire department only raised a lousy $1.85. Were they raising money for Scott Peterson’s defense fund or something?

Not that I’m defending the mother in this case, but I can understand why she would resort to such drastic measures. Gasoline has gotten as expensive as heroin.

But it’s still morally reprehensible and just plain wrong to make your kid steal for your lousy drug habit. That’s like President Bush getting his son to finish the Gulf War for him. Wait…