A Whitehorse grocery store chain will have to sue if it ever wants its money back after an appeal court tossed out a thieving employee's conditional sentence and put her behind bars.

In an oral decision delivered from the bench Thursday morning, the territory's appellate court agreed with the prosecution that a conditional sentence isn't appropriate for Wendy Reid's crime.

Reid was convicted last September for stealing a little less than $213,000 over 3 1/2 years between January 1999 and July 2002 from the Porter Creek Super A.

The Court of Appeal ruled a two-year penitentiary sentence is fit, prosecutor Kevin Drolet explained, but gave her credit for time she's already served.

Reid has already completed four months conditionally and three months in the Whitehorse Correctional Centre before sentence was imposed pre-trial and pre-sentence time gets double credit. Consequently, she has another 14 months to spend behind bars.

She will serve that time in WCC.

And because the appeal court deemed a penitentiary term of two years plus a day to be fit, Reid will not have to complete the two-year probation order. Probation orders can only be given to offenders who earn sentences in the territorial range of two years less a day.

The appeal court released its decision at 10 a.m. Thursday, and a warrant was issued for Reid's arrest. She's since been apprehended and was transported to WCC this morning.

The Yukon's chief territorial court Judge Heino Lilles had originally given the former longtime Super A employee an 18-month conditional sentence to be followed by a two-year probation order.

At Reid's sentencing, the Crown argued she should be sent to a federal penitentiary Outside for between two and four years. Her counsel argued for a conditional sentence so she can work and pay back the money she stole.

Until now, Reid had been serving under house arrest, except to look for work. As of her last sentence review, the woman had not yet found a job.

Her conditional sentence terms required her to pay back at least $20,000 in the first 12 months, and an additional $1,000 per month or as commensurate with her income.

The appeal court said there was no prospect of Reid ever paying back the money, skimmed from the grocery store's tills in ever-increasing amounts.

In her first year, Reid took $33,000. In the last year of the thefts, she was on par to steal more than $100,000.

It was noted the two-store chain can resort to civil remedies to retrieve its money, said Drolet, the Whitehorse prosecutor who argued the appeal in Vancouver. The Yukon and B.C. share an appeal court.

A conditional sentence is considered jail but is served in the community under probation-like terms. Unlike probation, which attracts another criminal charge if breached, a conditional sentence can be collapsed in part or in full if an offender is caught breaching it.

Reid recently served 30 days at WCC for missing her curfew.

She'd driven another person to circuit court in Haines Junction, and was spotted by a probation officer and the prosecutor who handled her case.