Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome everyone to our next episode of Warner's veteran podcast.
In the studio with me today, I have Brad White sitting next to me. And then Sarah Martin has joined us. Sarah Martin is an Air Force vet and also currently works at Safe House Project. Sarah, thanks for joining us today.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Thank you guys. I really appreciate being here.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Absolutely.
All right. Hey, Sarah, so let's talk a little bit. How about how one. We know each other and also what you did in the Air Force.
So I first met you, was it Whiteman, back in 1620? 16, 2017 timeframe, yes.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Good old Knob Noster, Missouri.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Right. Middle. Middle of nowhere for sure. I think the town population is a few thousand at most.
Mm.
What'd you do in the Air Force? What. What'd you join for and all that good stuff.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So I was an aircraft maintenance officer while I was in. I went to the Air Force Academy when I turned 17 years old. I commissioned in 2012.
And so right out the gate I started working to lead airmen on building munitions, working on F16s, F35s, A10s, and HC130Js.
Um, so I know we deployed together after our time in Missouri out there to Afghanistan. We were. I was there for about seven months in the last three years of my military service. I shifted gears a little bit and I taught Air Force ROTC at University of Arizona. So that was a really cool assignment. Just getting into invest in that next generation of military leaders.
During that time. There was a women's shelter actually just down the road from my office. And I figured it'd be good to start volunteering and kind of getting involved.
And that led to a part time job opportunity to running the front desk on Saturdays. And that turned into working three or four days there per week while I was on terminal leave, transitioning out.
So yeah, education. Oh, go ahead.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: No, let's pause there for a second. Let's go back to the academy. So you graduated from the academy in 12?
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: How was the academy? I've heard both sides of the coin of it was awesome and at the same time it was terrible.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Exactly. It was both.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Okay, okay. What led you to want to go to the academy? I mean, that's not an easy process to get accepted into the academy, let alone apply to the academy.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Absolutely. No, I just, I felt that call to serve when I was young. And I was also drawn to aviation as a whole. I was interested in possibly becoming a pilot.
I grew up with my dad, my grandpa, working on planes and flying planes, and I knew that I wanted aviation to be a career path going forward.
So, yeah, that's kind of how I ended up there.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Okay, so academy for four years. Don't get a whole lot of normal, traditional summer activity or anything along those lines. It's not a normal college experience. No, but that was your path to commission in the Air Force. And you said F16s first. Did you do F16s at Luke?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: I did.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Okay. And it was munitions to begin with.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: So F16s, then munitions, then F35s were brought on while I was working in back shops.
And then I transferred to Whiteman, where we met, and that's where I got my experience with A10s.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Okay. Which is the best plane in the inventory?
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Unfortunately, getting rid of so F16s and F35s ammunitions. What was your experience there? Like? Did you have 20 people that were building bombs? Did you have an AMU responsible for flight schedules? What. What did that look like for straight out of the gate at the Academy?
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So straight out of the gate, I became an assistant amu oic for those who know who that is.
For external to the Air Force speak. I was helping run a maintenance organization of about 200 airmen that were working on 24 F16 aircraft and trying to keep them flying. God. We did 14 turn 12s.
So that means we are launching 26 aircraft flights per day.
And for those don't know, an F16 takes about 20 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight that it gets, just due to the complex nature and the compact nature of the aircraft. If you want to work on something on the fuel tank, you've got to roll the entire jet engine back.
So it's a complex machine. And the mission was always going. We were there training new pilots on the F16.
So. So, yeah, it was intense. Then on the munitions side, there were 250 maintainers who were building the bombs and putting bullets into the aircraft and maintaining missiles. So that was its own beast. And I really enjoyed that, that part of my work.
[00:04:53] Speaker C: I appreciate you taking the time to break that down so I can understand what's going on instead of just sitting here looking pretty. But thank you for your service.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: So F16s into F35s. Was F35s at Luke as well?
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, I was there when the F35 arrived at Luke.
Everything was very shiny and new, so that was exciting. We had lots of Lockheed Martin contractors all over, all kinds of new tech, new buildings.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: Okay. And then from there, Whiteman time with the A10.
I had come to the A10 joined the reserve side of the house. So the part time there.
You were there active duty? Yes, we met, we worked together. We spent a couple of years at Whiteman.
I then left Whiteman, found a new gig in Lincoln with the Guard in Nebraska.
And then with that new gig, I deployed to Afghanistan, which then very quickly found out that you were there with the A10s as well. I was with the 135 component, but we were next door neighbors for, I think, what, we overlapped for three months. Ish.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: I think so. Yeah. That sounds about right.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: That was a fun trip. One that I'm happy is behind us.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: And my husband Joe was there with us too, so that was exciting. We were one of three married couples on the entire installation.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Funny, funny. Slash, not funny.
It's always impressive to me how small of a world the Air Force is. Right. So we had no idea we were deploying the same place at the same time. Found out. I don't recall when we. When I put two and two together, I think I saw the Whiteman tails on the flight line.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I saw your name pop up on a roster like a week prior when our. When our commander was telling us who was coming in.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Small, small world. Yep.
Okay, so from there you came back home and did you go to C130s from. From that deployment? What'd you. What did it look like when you got back from Afghanistan?
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Yes. So when I got back from Afghanistan, I was made the AMU OIC for the HCM130 unit for the Combat Kings.
So that was unique. I'd never worked heavies before, and the rescue mission was very unique in and of itself. So we supported like hurricane relief efforts and astronauts splashing back down from space, things like that. So it was very cool. And of course, just the refueling mission for the helicopters that were out of Moody Air Force Base there in Georgia.
Definitely enjoyed my time there with that team.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: What's it like doing aircraft maintenance on a heavy versus a F16? I would imagine it's an. I have no heavy maintenance experience. I grew up on the C130, but that was all transportation stuff. It's a completely different game, I would imagine, right?
[00:07:41] Speaker B: It is. You have so much more room to work on things. For one, that was definitely something that Starfleet. It's also a lot higher off the ground. When you stand on the wing, you have. You can have multiple teams working on different things at the same time just because the aircraft is so large, obviously. All communicating very well with each other. While that's happening, like, it was just. Yeah, it was different and it was cool. And the platform was newer, so everything was still shiny in the back. It was. Yeah, it was very cool. It was a very big change from working on 16s and A10s that had been in service for decades.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: And so the Combat King is that variant of the C130 that does rescue, right?
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Correct, yeah.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: HC130J.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: And how long were you at Moody?
[00:08:29] Speaker B: I was at midi. I want to say it was two and a half years.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: Okay. And Joe was on the A10 side, still there. Right. Okay.
What led you guys out to where you're at now?
[00:08:40] Speaker B: So it's honestly my assignment to Air Force ROTC.
So the A10 community really wanted him to go to Korea, but since I got picked up as an assistant professor, I dragged us to Tucson is really how that ended up working.
So I obviously wanted to choose. I chose a school that was very close to an A10 base so we could stay together for that assignment. And once his assignment team caught wind I'd had that job, they're like, okay, well, that's a no brainer. We're gonna. We'll sl. You into Moody or Sorry. Davis Monthin.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Okay, that's awesome. So what school were you an assistant professor at?
[00:09:16] Speaker B: University of Arizona.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Okay, what was that experience like?
[00:09:20] Speaker B: It was great. I really loved teaching cadets, and so I taught freshmen my first year, juniors my second year, and then freshmen again my last year in the role. I did recruiting all three years while I was there. So I would go into high schools. And yet these gen Gen Z young adults interested and excited about Air Force and Space Force initiatives, which was really cool.
Um, and yeah, it just kind of took me back to when I was a teenager and I was excited about my next chapter and just seeing that spark in this next generation of leaders and being able to see what they come up with when you throw them into crazy scenarios and watching them work through those challenges that we throw their way in rotc, it was so rewarding. And I absolutely loved my time there and with that team of staff that we had at the University of Arizona.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: That's awesome. Is that it? Do you show up every day in a uniform gig? Are you in a equivalent of a suit and tie? Are you wearing abus? Are you wearing. I mean, what. What's. I don't know.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: I've changed. It was based on the leadership. So during my first year, it was all OCPs. Then we had a new commander who favored blues. And then we had another commander who favored OCPs and then, but wanted us in Polos like that said ROTC and khakis on Friday. So it's just kind of.
It changed with the leadership.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Interesting.
Okay, so you had what, 11 and some change in the Air Force?
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Okay. At that point in time, I feel like most have made the decision to stay in for 20.
What led you to want to get out? Was it the dual spouse, both of you serving at the same time? What, what, what led you to want to leave the Air Force?
[00:11:09] Speaker B: So it was a combination of things, really. I started thinking seriously about getting out while I was in Georgia.
And obviously there's not a lot of civilian industry there in South Georgia, at least not in the industries that I was particularly interested in. And I started working with a life coach, though. Her name was Elisa Davies Davis, and she specializes in helping military members plan that next move, see if getting in is the best call for them or jumping out. And as I worked through that with her, she really opened my eyes to, like, what missions I was drawn to, what I valued just in life as a whole, and what I wanted to accomplish with the rest of my time here on Earth. And she connected me to my goal of wanting to serve in a non profit capacity someday. I just had it in my brain that I can't do that till I retire. I can't afford that right now.
And with her, I sat down, I actually looked at the numbers and I looked at the feasibility and I'm like, no, I can go into nonprofit as soon as I'm done with my time in the military. So I applied for the ROTC position, thinking, okay, either this or I'm hopping out and going to nonprofit once we come back from Korea.
But I got the job, so I was able to stay in the Air Force for another three years. And so that whole time I was here in Arizona when I got that opportunity to volunteer at a women's shelter, I was planning for my next move and planning for that transition.
And yeah, it was, it was a great. It was a slow roll. It was so built that I still have that overall goal in mind and like the whole time.
So I'm a person of faith and I. I could feel Jesus calling me and saying, like, I'm preparing you for something.
And it just kind of revealed it to me slowly and in pieces and it was really cool.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. Well, kudos on making the jump. And it sounds like you've found productive, worthwhile work since you made the jump to get out of uniform. So let's, let's shift into that next role. So program assistant at Sister Jose's Women's center part time. Was that why are you. While you were doing the professor stuff or is that right after you got out?
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Both.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Okay. Both.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: So, yeah, I was still in.
I start, I just started off as like a Wednesday night volunteer gig. And then like that last spring semester that I was teaching, I got more involved into where I was at the shelter every Friday, which expanded into Saturdays as soon as the semester ended. And then once I was on terminal leave, I was working there three or four days a week.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: So what, what, what type of stuff? So you show up at the shelter on Wednesday night. What do you, what are you doing?
[00:13:48] Speaker B: I was answering the phone.
So general phone calls, inquiries, people who are homeless and looking for a place to go, people who are looking for a place for their teenage daughter, people looking for a place for their grandmother who was on the streets.
All kinds of heartbreaking phone calls and crazy phone calls. Police officers coming to the front door, dropping off people from the back of their vehicle.
I was at the front door at the front desk, so monitoring who's coming in and leaving, looking at cameras. De escalating situations that arose as people had mental health episodes.
I was helping with the feeding and cleaning and it was so humbling. And it was a complete 180 mind shift to go from training America's next lead leaders for the Air and Space Force. And you know, it's only the best of the best. They had to rise to the occasion to, all right, I'm going to meet people where they are and try to help them to the best of my ability from where they're at right now.
And my heart had to change in a big way.
And I had a mentor named Laura who was the program director there at Sister Jose's, who really helped me through that change. She taught me trauma informed care.
And I just learned to love on these women. And I think my most humbling moment, I love to tell people about my time at Sister Jose's was there was a night where there was a mess on the floor and I was the only one there. I had to go clean it up. I went to the broom closet, I looked at the little soap dispenser. I'm like, I don't know how to work this.
I don't know how much of this soap to use. I don't know what concentration it is.
I don't. I'm not trained on how to mop the floors and it was just so humbling to go from professor at a university major in the United States Air Force to, oh, wow, I'm starting over again. But it was really good.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a heck of a thing.
So, misconceptions.
It sounds like there was a lot of homeless stuff, and we can shift into trafficking here shortly with current work. But there's just a ton of misconceptions, at least that I've seen, of homelessness is an issue in our country. Trafficking is also an issue in our.
Yes, country.
Talk to me about some of those misconceptions you talked about, meeting people where they were.
Any details to expand on that?
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. So.
So a lot of misconceptions I think people get about trafficking is that it's an international issue or that it's a borders issue. And while that certainly does happen, and there is an element of that, 80% of trafficking in the United States is U.S. citizens trafficking other U.S. citizens.
So I think it's. That's a far larger number than most people suspect when they originally hear about trafficking.
We know that 40% of child sex trafficking is familial, so it's mothers, aunts, grandparents, selling their children in order to make ends meet.
We've seen survivors, young and old, who have become homeless and were sexually exploited in order to find food, find shelter, stay with someone, and so. And that turned into a trafficking situation just in order to survive.
We've seen where someone maybe started thinking this was a voluntary decision. You know, they're going into sex work thinking that this is a good economic opportunity. Maybe they didn't have a lot of other opportunities in life. And then that. That pimp relationship turned into a trafficking situation where the person was just taken advantage of, abused, forced to do things that was against their will. Over and over again, as that relationship evolved, we've seen domestic violence turned into trafficking. We've seen where blackmail and revenge porn turned into trafficking. I think one of the more heartbreaking models you saw, too, and that people don't realize is the boyfriending model of trafficking, where someone enters a loving. I use air quotes there. Relationship that's actually just a coercive tool used for victim, where the boyfriend coerces them slowly over time and methodically into performing sex acts commercially in order to fund their dreams and to live the life they've always wanted. But it never stops. And so trafficking can look like a whole lot of different things. It's not just that fight at the border that we see a lot of times in Hollywood and in commercial News media.
[00:18:22] Speaker C: I'm sure there was quite a bit of overlap right between your, your role at Sister Jose's and where you're at today with Safe House Project. But you really highlighted kind of my path through this. Right. It was a training course that I had taken and it was, this is something that happens during the Super Bowl. This is something that happens far away from Omaha. And then as Adam and I have really worked more on this, here at Warner, you begin hearing those stories about the family trafficking and just where it happens in small communities everywhere across the US and that's been the most surprising. And I can remember the moment it all clicked was watching a trafficking video about home delivery in movers and there was a woman that was speaking who had been trafficked by her mother from age 6 all the way to the age of 22.
And really that 6 year old hit me because I had a 6 year old son at that same time. And so just the innocence lost on, on children and things like that is really what, what has fueled my passion, you know, in this area with, with what we're doing here at Werner. But let's, let's pause there real quick.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: What, what are we doing here at Werner? You want to give a quick high level overview of some of our efforts?
[00:19:40] Speaker C: Yeah. So we've, we've partnered with Truckers Against Trafficking, a nonprofit organization that, that really started with, you know, truck drivers being the eyes and ears of the roadway.
We've been doing that since 2015 in training all of our driver associates on an annual basis. And in 2020, we made a commitment to double our training hours to all of our associates, so provided them with more or additional training that we're doing both on onboarding and annually as well.
And then most recently, we've rolled out a program called Pathways to Freedom where we're not just training our associates here within, you know, our four walls of Warner, but really looking to spread that awareness out with our customers and partner base that we, you know, move freight for or work with on a consistent basis to try and get them more involved.
The most surprising thing to me is how involved everybody is, you know, across the board. Right. It's, it's something that, that a lot of people focus on, but what we're trying to do is help get them to that next level, you know, whether that's making sure all of their associates are trained or helping them develop a company policy or an anti trafficking policy or just, you know, continue their outreach to their, you know, additional partners and, and just spread the message of, of what you can do because it truly anybody can see something and say something and make a difference in somebody's life.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: Don't we have presence on some governmental committees as well? What are we doing at the, the government level?
[00:21:18] Speaker C: Yeah. Yep. So I was nominated by the, the organization to serve on the Department of Transportation's trafficking subcommittee or anti trafficking subcommittee. But what we did was really look at what the Department of Transportation has done all the way up to this point and then developed, you know, additional guidelines and recommendations for Congress on how we can take that next step to help prevent, you know, somebody from being involved in that situation. Right. So I think as an industry, you know, as a transportation industry, we've done a, a phenomenal job of training on 101 what is human trafficking?
And really our focus, a lot of it was again, how do we take that next step? Right. So how do we organize the data that has been gathered throughout the country, you know, through all of these transportation entities, using the national human trafficking hotline data to then find the hotspots so then we can take action. Right.
One of the most surprising things that I learned, and really it's how the training has gone from to a victim led training. Right. Or survivor led training. And from a law enforcement perspective, they've switched from arresting this female that is being trafficked for prostitution and now looking for the wider angle and taking a step back and why is she in this situation and how do they help?
And it's just unbelievable to see that change over the last almost five years.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: So Sarah, going from Sister Jose's to Safe House, walk us through that change.
What are you doing today? What have you done at Safe House?
Give us some info there.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. So I've been interested in anti trafficking work ever since like we were introduced to it in the Air Force. We all had to take that training module, which really paints that picture of something that only happens in overseas locations.
But then my classmate from Thunderbird School of Global Management, she founded Safe house project in 2017.
So she and I got her MBAs together and then she went on from Salesforce to founding this nonprofit organization.
And I just followed her work. I took the training that her and her team developed.
I just followed the organization, their success on social media. I got trained as a trainer to go and speak and train people on what human trafficking looks like. I trained the staff at Sister Jose's on what trafficking looks like.
And I was sitting at home one night and I saw that a job position opened at Safe House Project. And I Was like, man, you know, I've only been out for a month or two doing this work here at the shelter. I wonder if they think I'm ready for this kind of a step. And very soon after, I got a call from their team and we set up an interview and the rest is history. So I joined in winter of 2023 as a survivor support team member. So that meant that for the whole year, 2024, I was on the phone with survivors, answering the phone, hearing where they were at, trying to meet them with that compassion and determine the next steps.
I actually have a jar on my desk and each time I got to help a survivor get to safety, added a little plastic gem to it. And as of right now, there's 112 gems sitting on my jar.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: That's awesome.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Yeah, so it was super rewarding work.
And so what we do is, you know, we talk to the survivors, we figure out where they're at. We operate in all 50 states in the United States and once we figure out where they need to go, we help them apply to long term programs that are going to help them. We try to get them to emergency shelter if that's a step that they need detox, if they need that step, mental health stability, if they need to go to hospital for a little bit, we help coordinate all those little pieces and provide the logistics to get them there.
So that's what I've been up to. And then this year my job's shifted a little bit more into the special projects realm. But I'm still supporting the survivor support team and helping Safe House project in a lot of different initiatives.
[00:25:34] Speaker C: You said you're in all 50 states, so do you feel or do you see that you have to tailor your message or strategy based on which region or area that you're involved with or working with at that time?
[00:25:45] Speaker B: A little bit. Especially for minors in California, for example, our team actually busted through some legislation that required that minors in the state of California who were in the foster care system could only be placed in group homes and programs that were in California, which obviously wasn't helpful in a trafficking situation because then they're stuck there geographically closer to their traffickers.
So if they get scared or run, that makes it all the easier for their traffickers to get them back.
But thankfully my co worker Alia busted through that legislation. She advocated for it for years and finally got the laws changed to allow children to be placed out of state to get them further away from their traffickers. So it depends, you know, different states have different Laws especially, like I said, when it comes to minors.
You know, when we're talking to someone in Alaska, we have to worry about hypothermia and, you know, can, how do we get there's them somewhere warm. Quickly we're working with someone rural, it becomes, okay, what methods of transportation work out there, because Uber and Lyft don't operate everywhere. And so we have to start putting some of those pieces together.
When we're working with someone who's transgender, we have to look at, okay, what shelters and places are going to be accepting, what states might be or urban areas might be more accepting of them, where they're going to feel more comfortable, just start their healing journey.
Hawaii becomes logistically challenging when we're talking about long overseas flights, especially if they have a fear of flying.
So it, yeah, there's a whole lot that goes into tailoring each individual case. No two cases were alike.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: It's.
It's fascinating. Not in a great way, but it's just so much care has to be played to every single level of detail.
Good. Good on you. Right. That's, it's, it's. I, I'm at the same time infuriated that the country that I live in has to have an entire sector of people that have to help people do this. That's not, it's not a thing that fills me with pride that the country that I live in has that. But I'm also super happy that the country that I live in at least has that as a, at least has the Safe House project as an option for when people need help. Right. And this, this whole thing, I think just Brad alluded to it, but it just fills me with such dread being a dad to three kids.
I, I could stay awake forever worrying about that if I let myself with my, with my three kids.
And yeah, I, Yep, there's a lot to unpack.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah. And that's one of the things that Safe House product does is we have school based curriculum for middle and high school ages.
So we're teaching children, you know, about consent and we're teaching them, you know, at a very age appropriate level how to keep themselves safe from this type of pattern.
And we have trainings for parents available. It's called On Watch. It's available at our website, safehouseproject.org we have tools available. We have a resources page on our website as well for parents to help monitor their children's Internet usage.
I think our training is also really helpful for teachers who are looking out for these patterns happening in their classrooms.
But yes, it's something that we definitely have to be on guard for.
[00:29:12] Speaker C: I think that's the part that makes me the most nervous. Right When I was growing up, it was don't get into that person's van or don't take candy from strangers. And now you, you said the word Internet, right?
You know, everything is online and connected online.
And that, you know, strategy, so to speak, from the bad guys has evolved. And now it's, it's almost easier to, you know, build that trust and you know, break down those barriers because you're not the, the scary person on the street corner with your window down hollering, you know, and it's, it's evolved. So how, how does Safe House Project help combat that?
[00:29:52] Speaker B: Absolutely. So it's primarily through our prevention and training curriculums that we have our online training platforms that we have online.
We have, we've been even been asked to develop trainings specifically for pest control workers who see a different side of people's homes than the rest of us normally do. Truckers Against Trafficking is doing a great job in Yalls industry and really just leading the way in terms of knowing industry specific standards. That's one thing that businesses I think can really do to get in this fight is knowing how trafficking shows up in their area.
We also offer a hope training that shows healthcare professionals how trafficking looks when a patient comes to them who's being trafficked. And because 95% of the survivors we've surveyed have been in a healthcare setting while they were still being trafficked. So helping folks in every level of industry and government like recognizing of signs and being on look on watch and being on lookout for this pattern and for people who are in need is crucial to raising the survivor identification rate above 1%, which it currently is in our nation.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: So two things. One, what are some of those so industry agnostic. What are some of those patterns? You've mentioned patterns a few times. If you were to share the top three things of. Hey, these are the things that I go to a restaurant to eat dinner at. These are the things that would key me into.
I think there's an issue here that somebody needs to say something about. What, what are the three things? Two things. What are the top things that you look for?
Agnostic to industry for sure.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: So regardless of where I'm at, things I'm looking for is just someone who's showing extreme signs of fear, who's being controlled by someone else. It can be a man or another woman where they don't get to Speak for themselves. Looking for physical signs of abuse, obviously just that inability to speak or move freely.
If you notice that they don't have any control over their purse or their money, their ID documents, someone else is showing those for that person at an airport, a bus station.
If you notice.
If you see impoverished adults like when I was at Sister Jose's who are always showing up with a different man, who talk about having to spend different nights with different people, we actually had a survivor tell us one time that of all the pimps she had, that poverty was the worst one was the most brutal to her. So, yeah, those are signs I would look for in an adult. Amongst children. I look for inappropriate relationships with older adults.
That those patterns of grooming where it starts as just a completely benign relationship, but then they. They start touching the child more. They. The child starts receiving expensive gifts from this person who has no direct relation with them. Or maybe parents are trying to keep this child away from society more.
There's absenteeism from school.
They have abnormal social behavior for their age, like hypersexualization at a young age. Or they isolate from their peers more. They seem very uncomfortable around parents, aunts, uncles, people they should be comfortable with who they normally live with.
And of course, online, unsafe online activity where they're obsessed with their phones in apps and programs, where they can have open chats with strangers, where they can send photos or videos, having those friends.
That online platform can absolutely be used as a grooming tool.
So those are all things I kind of look for as I'm at church and interacting with youth group or just added a restaurant like you said. So those are all kind of things you look for in everyday community spaces as you're watching the neighbors down the street, all those kinds of things. And the great thing is that Safe House Project recently released an app that's available in Google Play, Samsung and Apple app stores.
And it's called simply Report.
AI picks up on patterns of trafficking and actively interacts with the reporter.
And so it will tell you if the signs you're seeing is likely trafficking. If it warrants a phone call to 911, if you want to report that tip anonymously to law enforcement, or if you just want to look for how can I get that person help? Can I slip them a phone number for Safe House Project or another organization that serves survivors directly, Maybe directions to a local shelter or a case management organization. It talks you through that in real time. It speaks 200 languages. It knows slang in modern terms, ebonics. It. It's Very adaptable. And it was trained by over 200 anti trafficking individuals who are in law enforcement, health care, mental health care, and just across the nonprofit industry. So it's very sophisticated. And it's already, just today we saw a case come across and we're already taking action to get to a safe place. So that happened literally an hour before I hopped on this podcast. So.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: So using technology to combat the bad guys. Using technology, right. And being able to identify, do you guys with your app, do you capture like location data or any of that metadata that may be in the background to identify hotspots or, you know, anything of that nature?
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Only if they want us to.
So when we built out this app, privacy, user privacy was one of our number one concerns. So we don't report things to law enforcement unless the user specifically says, I want this to be reported.
Indicates that to us during their conversation with AI. So yes, we do encourage people like, especially if there's like a threat of life or life, you know, abuse of a child, AI encourages them like, you know, like this could be life or death. Like, please tell us where you are, please give us names, any details you're willing to share that doesn't compromise your own safety, please share it with us so we can take action against this. So.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: You said earlier survival rate, I think you, I think you said 1% survival rate out of trafficking, just identification.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So survivor identification rate. So right now it's estimated based on all modern research that of all the trafficking, the sex trafficking that's taking place in the United States, only 1% of people who are survivors of it are being identified as survivors. So that means 99% of individuals are going overlooked and never get treatment or recovery in any sort of formal capacity.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a powerful statement.
That's. Yeah.
Okay, so you've mentioned partners that you work with a few times throughout this conversation. Brad, you mentioned it a few times when you were talking about the stuff Warner does as well. But I would imagine Safe House Project is well connected with local, city, state, federal law enforcement, but also a slew of other non governmental organizations and non profits, right?
[00:36:55] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: How do you go about building those partnerships?
How do you get connected to those partnerships? All that good stuff?
[00:37:05] Speaker B: Absolutely. It comes from genuine relationship building and reaching across the table, getting to know other organizations that have similar or identical missions and visions.
It just comes from knowing the people in our own communities.
Gosh, yeah. We're in this fight in so many different ways as a team. We're a small but mighty team. As we always like to say, but yeah, we. Our vision is that our. Yeah, our vision that we, you can see on our website is that we can eradicate child sex trafficking in America by 2030. And that's a vision that we stand by. And we have a book outlining exactly how we can do that.
And the key to that success is everybody coming together. And that means law enforcement, that means healthcare, that means NGOs, that means communities, pastors, school teachers, everybody. Pest control workers, McDonald's in place, everybody.
That's the only way we can get this vision done by 2030. And it is possible.
And so it's through those genuine relationship buildings, through keeping open minds of communication and just being honest and genuine with people and coming to the table and putting aside past grievances and any sort of preconceived notion about what other organizations do and just coming to the table with people is really how we get that going.
[00:38:24] Speaker C: Are there any surprising partnerships or allies that you found, whether that be, you know, local, governmental, corporate, grassroots?
[00:38:35] Speaker B: I'm trying to think. That's a good question.
Gosh, we just have so many people that we've been working with lately. I'm trying to think.
I know. One surprising partner that asked us for training was the natural gas industry.
They came to us and there's an organization that does maintenance on 80% of the natural gas lines in the western parts of the United States. And they wanted to train all of their employees on how to spot signs of trafficking in rural parts of America. I thought that was absolutely fantastic.
So because we, like I mentioned it, this doesn't just happen in urban areas. It's a common myth that goes around too. It happens in rural communities and small communities and upper class, higher economic income communities, everything.
It's happening every level of our society. And so the more industries and the more organizations that we have in this fight, it can only benefit us.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: Questions do you have, Brad?
[00:39:34] Speaker C: I just say if there's anything that you have seen in your work that's a commonly overlooked item. Right. That, that a policy, a system that, you know, we aren't looking at to help make this change.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Yes. So I'm so glad you asked that question because I love getting to answer that and getting to like show people some of those little corners of this problem that isn't highlighted in the media very often.
A couple of those are men who are being trafficked.
So there is a fantastic organization out of Texas called Ranch Hands Rescue. They are the only long term residential program for men who have been trafficked Right now, there are other organizations that have missions to help men who have been trafficked in different capacities, but they rescue abused agricultural livestock and they bring in men who have been trafficked. And it's a symbiotic relationship as they both heal together. And it's such a beautiful thing.
I love hearing stories of their success. They have a long wait list to get into their program because that need is so high and so under recognized.
I even read a study from Dr. Rose Sipowitz, who is out of ASU.
She did a study in Phoenix at one point, of 250 youth who have been trafficked in the city of Phoenix, 51% of them were male.
And I think that number points to something that may be hiding in our research and our data due to the culture and the stigma of men who've been sexually abused and coming forward and talking about that experience. So I think that's a major area that gets overlooked.
I think it also gets overlooked that this happens to adults, not just children. I've been on the phone with law enforcement before while one of the survivors we were trying to help was at a grocery store. They got to the manager, like, to get help and to get the police there. And the police, like, no, no, no, she's not being trafficked. That only happens to children. That's a children's crime.
No, it's not. Very much is not.
Oh, that particular situation was so frustrating. But thankfully we got that survivor the help she needed.
But it doesn't always happen that way. Right. And so just highlighting those areas, the last one that I want to mention is survivors who have pets.
A lot of times there's a statistic that over 50% of domestic violence survivors will not leave their partner or their abuser unless they can arrange for safety for their animal. And I have seen traffickers use this as a tool to keep people being trafficked.
They get a feeling that their victim is about to run, so they give them a kitten to take care of. They say they're about to run, so they kidnap their dog and say, I'm going to hurt your dog if you run, if you don't do this for me anymore.
So if we have shelters and organizations that can't accept pets or can't plan for pets to also have a path to safety, as these women, these men and women are exiting the situations, we, we're trapping them further because that psychologically having that trauma bond to this, this only other living creature that cares about me, and they oftentimes will value the life and the well, being of that animal above their own. So it just psychologically traps them in that pattern of trafficking. And I think so few organizations.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: Have.
[00:42:55] Speaker B: The funding to be able to assess that need and oftentimes just don't have the physical space or don't know the laws about how to house or shelter animals. It's a whole thing.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: That is a whole thing that I had never thought about, period.
I don't know of a single homeless shelter here in Omaha. That doesn't mean there's not one. I don't know of one that accepts Peter. And not, not that a trafficking emergency trafficking shelter is necessarily a homeless shelter, but that you just don't think of shelters accepting pets and most are just not equipped to.
That's not, that's not something I expected to be a barrier to that care.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:43:41] Speaker A: But it makes, it makes total sense.
[00:43:47] Speaker C: One more question for me.
You said you had in how many gems in your jar?
[00:43:52] Speaker B: 112.
[00:43:53] Speaker C: 112. So those are your success stories that, that you've been able to help with.
Obviously those conversations with victims and, and things of that nature are, are heavy and, you know, not ideal. Right. But what do you do to, to decompress or, or stay grounded when you're dealing with those kind of heavy conversations or those situations?
[00:44:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. No. You have to have good self care practices if you're going to be in this fight.
You have to have those outlets. You have to be able to turn your phone on silent and walk away for a couple hours when you need to.
My husband's been a great support to me while I've been working through all of this.
And more than anything, my team at Safe House Project is just a team of absolute all stars and they're there to listen to me when I need to talk through a challenging situation.
When my heart's breaking about a particular survivor, I know I can always call on them and they're going to talk me through it or they're going to give me the time off that I need to get back in the game, get my headspace right again and be able to come back and give this, you know, the full effort that it deserves.
[00:45:06] Speaker C: That's good that you have that support network as well.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: All right, Sarah, as we wrap this up, what. What else do you want us to know? What parting shot do you have for us? Any. Any success story, top of mind for you that you're very proud of? Anything that we need to know? How do we connect with Safe House Project if we want to?
Assuming that you're on socials and all that good stuff.
[00:45:30] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. So the success stories that come to mind, gosh, earlier in March, I was just talking to a program that accepted one of our survivors and that program let us know that our survivor had been accepted to nursing school.
So that was a huge win there, obviously starting a new life.
I have had several, talked to several survivors who've opened their own businesses. Entrepreneurship is particularly alluring to individuals who've experienced trafficking. Just that idea of being able to call their own shots is super attractive. So it's so cool getting to see the businesses and the programs and nonprofits that are started by these survivors, to see them sitting on panels and leading the way on anti trafficking efforts, to be working with law enforcement. And one of the survivors I helped last year actually just finished her first year as a criminal justice major and she got straight A's this year while being a single parent living in shelter.
So there's so many success stories out there. There's. Yes, there's so much hope for survivors on the other side of recovery. It is hard work.
It takes survivors so many tries and it, you know, there are a lot of hurdles along the way, but that success, that, that other side is so bright and it's so worth it for those who are willing to fight for that next chapter of independence.
If you're looking to get involved with Safe House Project, if you like what we do, you can obviously find more information at our website, safehouseproject.org we are on Facebook and LinkedIn and X.
You can find our trainings available at our website.
Obviously, we, we deeply appreciate our donors and we steward every single donor dollar with great care.
That's something that we do, we take very seriously.
And there's all kinds of volunteer opportunities while there aren't as many with us since we're a remotely based operation.
But we welcome those letters. Anyone who would like to help or be part of our team, drop us a note on our contact us page. Tell us what skills you bring to the table.
And if we can't find a volunteer role for you within our organization, we can maybe lead you to something that's more local to you or another person that's in this fight.
[00:47:49] Speaker A: Sarah, thanks for the time today.
[00:47:51] Speaker C: Yeah, Appreciate it.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and talk about this. It's my favorite subject in the world to talk about. I'm kind of a downer at parties now that this is my work, but I really appreciate just the chance to get to talk with fellow veterans, and I'm just inspired by what you guys are doing with Warner and how seriously you guys are taking this fight against trafficking as an organization.
