Denise Woodrum: US citizen found with cocaine hidden in shoes at Sydney Airport

Less than a month later, the Missouri woman who was a lay associate of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ would be importing cocaine concealed inside a pair of high-heel shoes into Sydney Airport.

"It was a big shock to the whole family," her father, Tom Rozanski, told Fairfax Media from his Illinois home. "It just came out of the blue."

Mr Rozanski, who speaks to his daughter weekly, said there were no secrets between the pair.

"At least I didn’t think we did [have any]," he said.

But she hadn’t told him about "Hendrik Cornelius".

"She met a man on the internet and started an intimate relationship with him," Woodrum’s NSW Legal Aid lawyer Rebecca Neil told District Court Judge Penelope Wass last week.

Woodrum texted Cornelius on May 28, 2017, saying that her father had agreed to help financially after telling him she needed $US50,000.

Denise Woodrum: US citizen found with cocaine hidden in shoes at Sydney Airport