HAMMOND | Heidi Renee Brown regrets ever letting an acquaintance store a paint can at her house.

The friend was Francisco Garcia, 23, of Merrillville, and the paint can was filled with a brown substance that was later identified as low-grade heroin, federal authorities allege.

Brown is asking a federal judge this week to go easy on her as she tries to put her life back together in the wake of her arrest for her role in Garcia's drug sales operation.

She is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday for a previous guilty plea to distributing more than 100 grams of heroin, court records show.

Garcia already was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for admitting to selling more than a kilogram of heroin and being a felon in possession of a gun.

Records filed by Brown indicate she had a relationship with Garcia for about five years before the fateful night in April 2007 in which she received $80 from Garcia to follow him in her car to Chicago "where he needed to pick up a package."

The package was the paint can, which Garcia asked Brown to take without telling her what was in it, court records state.

Brown claims in court filings that she did not recognize the substance in the can, even after opening it. She contends that on three separate occasions, she asked Garcia to remove the can from her home, but he did not.

When he finally came again on June 8, 2007, he had another person with him -- a confidential informant whose cooperation led to the arrests of Garcia and Brown.