It's bad enough to come home as a young parent after a long day at work to discover thieves have broken into your home and violated your life.

But when, among the jewellery and the money and the personal items, they steal not a few but just about every single photo you have ever taken of your two young children, it's enough to make you desperate.

That's what parents Nicky and Nelson Correia are - desperate to get the photos of their five-year-old daughter and 15-month-old son back.

On Monday Mrs. Correia came home to find thieves had used a crowbar to break down the front door of her family home on Morning Glory Drive in Devonshire.

Horrified, she rushed into the house, to see the bedrooms ransacked and some of her family's most treasured possessions - her son's christening jewellery among them - stolen.

But the most heartbreaking moment came when she discovered the family's 200 pound safe containing photo CDs and backup CDs along with memory sticks from the couple's Sony Cybershot digital camera had also been taken.

Everything else - the jewellery, the passports, birth certificates, money, and camera itself - are replaceable, she said.

The pictures are not. "That was every single picture ever taken of our kids except for what we have in our baby book.

"Somebody must have seen something," the tearful mother told The Royal Gazette yesterday. "I'm begging anyone with any information to call the Police, or for those who took them to give them back. They're no good to anyone else. Just don't throw them out."

Mrs. Correia is offering a reward for the return of the photo CDs and memory sticks, including the purple 128 megabyte memory stick which was inside the camera and contained pictures of her daughter's Saturday night recital. "They can keep the camera ... I just want those pictures back.

"Drop them off to the Police, mail them to me, leave them somewhere they can be found, in a church or at the post office or something.

Her house is on the road, she explained, and it would have taken at least two men to move the safe.

The couple were out of the house from 7.30 a.m. on Monday until about 5.20 p.m., and their landlady heard such noises coming from their apartment between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. that she nearly called to tell them to keep it down.

The experience has left Mrs. Correia nearly ill with worry and has affected her children also, with her five-year old just old enough to understand that something terrible has happened.

"This morning she told me to stay home," Mrs. Correia said. "She said if they come back I should kick them in the stomach."

Mrs. Correia was also worried by the fact that the thieves appeared to have only gone into the bedrooms, leaving the family's DVD player and televisions, among other valuables, alone.

"I'm afraid that I'll go home now to find they've been again," she said. "What if they do come back?"

The fact that the home was locked and secure - and that the family's three-month old dog was there - didn't stop the thieves, she said. "What more can we do? I just want to tell people, please, lock up. Even having a safe is not safe enough anymore.

"I've only had two hours sleep. I had to get up to use the bathroom twice in the night and woke my husband because I was afraid. We didn't even let the kids sleep there last night. I feel ill to my stomach.

"If anybody knows anything, contact the Police, contact the press or me. Come one day when I'm not home and leave them on the doorstep.

"If there's any lead to those photos, it would be greatly appreciated. I'm very thankful no-one was there and no-one was injured - but those photos are very sentimental."

The Correias' post office box is PO Box PG49, at the Paget Post Office.