If you saw something bad happening, would you be able to stop it? What if you weren’t sure if something was going on, but you had a gut feeling that you needed to help. Would you act on that instinct?
One flight attendant did just that. In doing so, she saved a teenage girl from sex trafficking.
When a well-dressed older man and a young girl who had clearly not be taken care of appeared on a plane together, Shelia Frederick sensed that something wasn’t right. The two seemed like an off pair to be traveling together, and there was something about their interaction that didn’t seem right.
“He was well dressed, that’s what kind of got me because why is he well dressed, and she is looking disheveled and out of sorts.”
She tried to talk to the two and was shut out by the man.
The girl seemed to be scared of him, so Frederick was sure she needed to be careful about how she handled the situation.
She wrote a note in the bathroom and secretly told the girl to go use it. The note asked if she was OK, and the girl wrote back on it.
Frederick explained:
“She wrote on the note she needed help.”
Frederick then alerted the pilot, who called the police. By the time the plane landed, the police were waiting to take the man into custody. The girl was rescued and returned to her family. Had the flight attendant not have stepped in and helped, the girl would have likely been sold as a sex slave or turned out on the streets as a prostitute.
Flight attendants are now being trained to look for things out of the ordinary.
Thousands of teenagers and children are trafficked every year, and many of them are transported on flights. If more flight attendants could recognize these children as being in trouble, they could save more of them.
Frederick believes that this training will make a big difference and save more lives.
She said:
“I’ve been a flight attendant for 10 years and it’s like I am going all the way back to when I was in training and I was like I could have seen these young girls and young boys and didn’t even know.”
Frederick and the teenager have kept in touch over the years. Frederick put her phone number on the original note, and the girl memorized it. They talk often, and Frederick learned that the girl was attending college and doing well.
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