WAILUKU — Until her debit card was refused at a store last September, an 86-year-old Kihei woman didn't realize her bank accounts had been drained by a caregiver she had trusted, her daughter said.

"My mother said, 'I had $40,000 in that account,' " said her daughter, who asked that her name not be used, and who was at Wal-Mart shopping with her mother when the debit card wasn't accepted for a $100 purchase. "We went right to the bank. Then they started pulling out forged checks."

She said investigators documented $73,000 stolen from her mother between February 2006 and October 2008 while Rosemarie Delatorre was hired to work as a certified nursing assistant to help the elderly woman with day-to-day chores.

The money was taken through forged checks that were deposited into Delatorre's account, fraudulent credit card charges and the early withdrawal of certificate-of-deposit funds through a forged signature, the woman's daughter said.

Last month, a Maui County grand jury indicted Delatorre on 22 charges, including first-degree identity theft, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. She also faces charges of two counts of first-degree theft, 16 counts of second-degree forgery, two counts of fraudulent use of a credit card and second-degree theft.

A May 11 trial is scheduled for the 51-year-old Kihei resident, who is also known as Rosemarie Dabrera and Rosemarie Delatorre-Dabrera. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Her bail was originally set at $100,000. But during a hearing on Wednesday, 2nd Circuit Judge Joel August said he would follow a bail study recommendation and reduced Delatorre's bail to $20,000. He ordered Delatorre to have no contact with the victim and her daughter and to stay away from Kalama Heights retirement home, where the victim lives. If released from jail, she was ordered to turn in her driver's license, passport and other forms of identification and to report for monitoring.

Deputy Public Defender Greg Ball showed the judge a letter from a doctor outlining Delatorre's health problems.

"I think she is more disabled than the charges are severe," Ball said. "She seems significantly disabled medically and physically unable to do much.

"The best outcome for all concerned is if she were essentially under a house arrest regime."

He said Delatorre would lose her Hawaii QUEST health insurance if she were not released soon from jail.

"She is disabled," Ball said. "She's not working, so it's physically impossible for her to have access to the people that are complaining against her.

"If she is essentially ordered to be housebound, it's not possible for her to be a threat to the community."

Saying Delatorre has no criminal record, Ball asked that she be released on supervision.

But Deputy Prosecutor Carson Tani said Delatorre's bail should remain at $100,000.

"There's no evidence that the Maui Community Correctional Center can't take care of her health problems, if in fact she really does have them, which it appears she does," Tani said. "I don't have that much sympathy for her considering what she did in this case.

"She basically ruined the life of an 86-year-old woman. This woman has no way of supporting herself anymore."

In the indictment, Delatorre is charged with forging 16 checks made out to herself from the woman's First Hawaiian Bank account for amounts ranging from $600 to $2,750. The checks were presented from October 2006 to September 2008 and deposited into Delatorre's account at the same bank, the woman's daughter said.

Because it took a while for the woman to realize she was being defrauded, "the banks are saying they are not responsible for forged checks and withdrawals from bank cards," Tani said.

He said a private investigator hired by the victim's family showed that Delatorre has property in the Cayman Islands, making her a potential flight risk.

In court Wednesday, Delatorre used a cane. Ball said she couldn't stand.

But the victim's daughter said Delatorre didn't seem to be impaired as recently as last September, when she was working long hours for her mother and other Kalama Heights residents.

Delatorre had done some banking for the victim and had a key to her mailbox, keeping her from seeing bank statements that showed the unauthorized withdrawals, the daughter said.

She said her mother has lived at Kalama Heights for nearly four years since moving from Florida and had been in and out of the hospital at times.

She hired Delatorre through an agency that claimed to do thorough background checks and was licensed and bonded, according to the daughter, who lives in Lahaina.

"My mother was an easy target," she said. "She trusted her. We met her, and she seemed nice enough. It's just a real sad story."

Delatorre was paid through the woman's insurance policy, the daughter said. With that, her Social Security checks and her savings, her mother could afford to live at Kalama Heights. After learning about the thefts, the retirement home gave the woman a temporary discount on rent to try to help her stay there, the daughter said. But she said her mother will have to find somewhere else to live by April, when she will have to pay the full rent of nearly $3,000. "We're hoping to find some help for her legally, financially," she said.

Although Delatorre is being charged with stealing $73,000, the victim's daughter said she believes the amount taken from her mother is possibly more than $120,000. There were unexplained charges on her mother's accounts including a $150 pair of shoes and dinner at an Italian restaurant in Kihei.

"Everybody should know about this," she said. "Everybody should know that this could happen to their mother and father. She just embezzled basically everything from this poor woman."