Shelia Frederick a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines was on a routine flight to San Francisco, USA, something caught her eye. A well-dressed man sat next to a young, blonde girl who was wearing shabby looking for clothes.
When Shelia tried to talk to the man, he was immediately unpleasant. She immediately felt something was wrong, and went to the airplane toilet where she left a piece of paper and a pen. As she walked past the girl again, she signaled for her to go to the bathroom.
The girl followed Shelia’s instructions, and when Shelia returned to the toilet, she found devastating words on a scrap of paper:
“Help me”, it said.
Shelia went straight to the pilot who helped summon the police to meet them upon landing in San Francisco
As it turns out, the girl was a victim of human trafficking and had been kidnapped two months earlier.
Shelia’s encounter and saving of the young victim occurred in 2011 when the girl was about 14-years-old.
Following the incident, Shelia became a member of Airline Ambassadors International, an organization launched in 2009 by former flight attendant Nancy Rivard to help flight attendants get better training in detecting victims of human trafficking.
