Behind the Badge: How Heidi Chance Fought Human Trafficking from the Inside Out

Heidi Chance spent nearly 14 years undercover as a detective fighting sex trafficking. In this episode, she shares the hard truths behind how victims are lured, controlled, and misunderstood by the justice system. We also discuss the real role of tattoos, hotel keys, and phones in identifying trafficking — and why education is more powerful than judgment. Now retired, Heidi leads a dual mission: training officers and educating parents on prevention and recovery.

Website: https://achanceforawareness.com
Book: Talk to Them (on digital dangers & how to talk to kids)

Heidi Chance O
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[00:00:00] Hi, my name is Heidi Chance. I am a retired undercover human trafficking detective. I have 27 years in law enforcement right now and counting.

I'm still in law enforcement and I am an undercover detective in the realm of human trafficking, where I spent almost 14 years as a female undercover, posing as a prostitute or an escort. With the purpose of targeting sex buyers and traffickers, a lot of people ask me how I got started with all of this.

And there's a story in that. Basically I was a patrol officer and I decided to have a family. And being a female police officer with a baby is a little difficult. And so I came off the streets and I became an officer at the school, a school resource officer. And so when doing that, I blinked and six years went by and I realized.

You know that I wanna move around in the department and uniquely at that [00:01:00] time, I happened to be one day taking the police car keys back into the station 'cause we don't get to take the police car home. And I was returning the keys and I passed an area of the police station called the juvenile holding area.

And in that area there was a girl in custody and there's a little window there. And I happened to peek in the window and I recognized the girl as one of my former students. Who was 13 or 14 when I knew her. And on that day when I saw her again, she was 16, almost 17. And she recognized me.

So I opened up the door and I said, Hey, why are you in trouble? And she responded about being in trouble with, her boyfriend for prostitution. And I had already been a police officer. Six, seven years by then. And I had no idea, I knew prostitution was a crime. I'd been a cop for a while, but I didn't know that kids got involved with prostitution.

And uniquely around that same time, Phoenix Police Department had a big case. That was, actually [00:02:00] national attention. And it involved a little girl that was held in a dog crate, and was forced to perform prostitution acts out of an apartment. And that case was in the news and. Then this little girl, came across my path and then I had some opportunities to do undercover shadow temporary assignments.

And then I fell in love with the idea of trying to combat this problem myself, with, the work that I could possibly contribute to doing. And so that's kind of how I fell into the situation of investigating sex trafficking as well as working as a female undercover. Okay. I have watched a lot of proce, police procedural type stuff.

So like SVU? Yeah. NCIS. If you look, you can find a hundred of them. And I watch a lot of them because I do not want to be a cop. But I don't know, there's something about those types of things that makes my brain actually [00:03:00] work. Still, it's one of the only things I watch willingly.

Everything else people have to force me to watch. But, the point behind that is there have been episodes across the realm, that talk about, first of all, cops going undercover as. Prostitutes to try to get, get people off the street who are contributing to the problem of prostitutes being there.

Whether that's the, pimps or it's the, sex buyers. That they're trying at that moment to get off. The streets. But the one question I've always had is, how do you get picked to be like. A prostitute, basically. I mean, you're not actually going to go do that part of it, but like basically you're in a cop precinct or whatever and somebody goes, okay, you're gonna be a prostitute today.

To me that's real. [00:04:00] Yeah. Yeah. So it could be several different ways. It could be, as a young female officer, you get seen by a detective group and they wanna use you for a particular case or for, what we called were prostitution stings. And so that was kind of how it also came to me, but also my interest almost at the same time was triggered by my contact with this little girl.

And it's one of those things where the police department actually has so many different jobs within the police department. Like you could do canine, you could do robbery, detective homicide, the air unit, the drug guys. There's so many different little sections of the police department.

In. My time with the Vice Unit at the time is what that unit was called. I got more and more interested in doing the undercover work as a female. And what's unique about this, choice to go to the vice unit is when I first started working the vice unit, it was mostly male detectives.

There was only [00:05:00] one female position allowed for each squad, and that was because during that time period. We were targeting prostitutes. That's who they were arresting all day long. And then every now and again, they would do a sting operation involving targeting sex buyers or Johns. And now it's kind of evolved to where these squads have female officers outweighing the male officers on the squads.

I've been able to witness kind of the evolution of law enforcement's risk. To this problem, how we proactively go after it. And now you need female undercovers to target sex buyers and to target traffickers, so that we can actually make a better impact, with fighting this crime. And with that evolution, we also found we were arresting potential victims.

That was the focus then. We didn't realize these people, yes, they're committing a crime, but they may be forced into this situation. This may not be where they're voluntarily participating in this. And [00:06:00] so we've evolved to the point where we are now, actually asking the question we were never asking before, which is.

What can we actually do to help you get out of this situation instead of arresting you and then meeting you the next night again and again and again. And so it's really been a journey that I've gotten, a front row seat to see the evolution of law enforcement and how we respond to this growing problem.

I would say, until the late nineties, early two thousands, most of the time when you heard a boat. Prostitutes or anything else. The only times you heard about them is when a serial killer was around. Yeah. And I think that there has been a lot of work done to bring it back into everybody's eyes, that one, they could be a victim, and two, they are still people.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's part of, my awareness mission with my business. On the side is getting the word out there. You've had documentaries also help with this, if [00:07:00] you've seen Sound of Freedom. Sound of Freedom came out last year and it was kind of a big to do because there was, some argument over the plat, the network that was gonna pick it up, and I think it eventually ended up on Amazon, I'm not sure.

But it was a documentary and it's a really good movie because it's featuring a organization called the, the something railroad. Operation Railroad. Anyway, they are targeting traffickers out of the country, so it's a really good movie to get, like a taste of what's going on. But really it is a depiction of international trafficking and not what it looks like domestically here in the United States.

So another documentary that I would suggest viewers watch is called Sex Trafficking in America. And it is, frontline PBS that put out the documentary and it happened to have been filmed of my unit where they followed us around for three years and they filmed basically, initially it was going to be about the female detectives, women fighting for women.

And it turned into that [00:08:00] in addition to in the filming, they just. They happened to capture a night where we rescued a juvenile and this little girl had met her trafficker online and then he convinced her to run away, and it tells the story of, all the things that she went through. She was kind of sold between three traffickers actually, and then ultimately the resolution of that investigation where they all three were found, guilty and accepted their responsibility and went to prison.

So it, is a really good. Depiction of what it looks like domestically as far as law enforcement responding to this problem, but also how it is happening now, where kids are online, on social media, on these devices, and that's where traffickers are engaging with them. And that's where this all really begins.

If you get. Arrested and go to and get a, and get convicted of the crime of trafficking.

What is the year amounts in there? So that [00:09:00] depends on many things. That depends on your prior criminal history record. If you, have other felonies and then you go and commit another felony, then you get more work time in prison. Or if you were out on release, for another investigation or. On probation, those kind of things, but also the age of the victim, if it's a juvenile versus an adult.

And it's one of those things where also in that evolution that I've been talking about. Before, when I first started, we were having, traffickers take plea offers for like nine years. Trafficking a 14-year-old, the same thing they're doing today. But fast forward to today, the same pimp, the same trafficker could get.

A sentence of 108 years in prison. And that the reason and explanation for that is the community awareness. It's getting out to the public, to your audience to be, educated on this topic because. If I'm going to testify as an expert witness in a trial, and I'm going to [00:10:00] tell you first of all, jury of 12, I'm gonna tell you this person's a victim, even though

I might be describing them committing a crime of prostitution, but we'll get to why they're a victim. But then I'm also gonna testify sometimes that they were freely walking down the side of the road. With a phone in their hand, but I want the jury to feel and know that they were trapped and not free to leave.

And unless they know the dynamics of trafficking and have educated themselves or have an expert witness come in and testify about the dynamics of trafficking, I. It's really hard to put two and two together. The common person would think she has a phone, she's not locked in a bedroom somewhere or handcuffed to a bed.

She's walking down the side of the road. She could have left, she could have called the police. That is where I'm trying to explain to a jury why that victim is trapped and not free to leave. And those things happen when we describe the dynamics of what was going on and what was happening to this victim like such as,

by definition, of sex [00:11:00] trafficking or human trafficking is this commercial sexual exploitation of a person through the means of force fraud or coercion force. A lot of times this is a violent incident. You've got victims that have had guns pointed at them, have been stabbed, have been shot at, have been beat up, having to go to the hospital.

The beating was so bad, those kind of things. Very, very violent lifestyle. The fraud and the coercion are harder to explain, but they do occur in this lifestyle. And when you have someone testifying about what fraud is and the fraud, I would equate to traffickers are very skilled at. Promising this amazing life.

If you come with me, I'm gonna get you into cosmetology school. I'm gonna get you a car, I'm gonna get you an apartment. You wanna go to Vegas, let's go. I'll take you there. I'm gonna buy you nice things. You can't have those things though, unless you're with me 100% and doing what I say and doing all the things that needs to happen here for us to make this money, which means you're gonna prostitute and then the [00:12:00] coercion.

Which is basically, I equate that to the threats. It is very real. When a trafficker says, I'm going to punish you, and this, if you violate this rule, this equals this. Because they've seen it. They've either witnessed another victim get assaulted or they themselves have been assaulted. And the threats, traffickers know everything about their victims.

That's by design, because they could flip the switch and threaten them. They're gonna hurt someone else in their family if they don't do what they. Or are told to do. And so I always say a trafficker is the most reliable person you'll ever meet. If they say they're gonna beat your ass, they're gonna beat your ass.

And victims believe that's gonna happen 'cause they've seen it. And that's why they stay. That's why they're not free to leave and that's why they're stuck in this situation. And having a jury understand that is, critical to being able to hold these people accountable. It's the same with abuse victims, which these people usually are like, they are at home.

They [00:13:00] probably have phones, they have cars even. But if you leave, you can't live without me. Yes. Domestic violence. Yeah, and it's one of those things too where they tie you to them like you have vehicles now in your name that they made you get because they didn't want it in their name.

They want it in your name, in case the license plate, the police pull you over, it's in your name, and it's not the trafficker or kids in common like. They use kids all the time against their victims. They take their kids away from them. I have had a victim, literally had Department of Child Safety or child protective services come in like the pimp, called on the girl for prostitution, had the kids taken away, and then told the victim, I'm gonna help you get your kids back, but you need to prostitute yourself for me.

Like completely twisted sick stuff that these guys are into to get victims to stay and feel that they cannot [00:14:00] leave standing outside of it. You can sometimes hear it right? You can you standing outside of that relationship and go, oh wow, that's super toxic. But sometimes inside of that relationship, it wasn't a fire when it started.

It started off very slowly and it gradually got bigger. Some of them get turned onto drugs to try to, suppress everything and make them more likely to listen. And there's this whole saying out nowadays where you can cook a frog by putting it in lukewarm water and then gradually raising the flame.

And that's what any kind of abuser does. They're not gonna come at you day one going, you're never gonna live without me. 'cause you'd go, yeah, you're an idiot. And I'm out. Right. So they start off super nice. Yeah, 100%. That's all part of the manipulation. And then obviously carrying out those threats,

That's why these victims are stuck. [00:15:00] Yeah.

Did you help them once they were disconnected from their trafficker, or was there still stuff you couldn't do? Like, I'm not sure the line there. Yeah. Law enforcement does our best. In fact, prior to, I think we started this program in 2019, but prior to. The detectives were, the rescuer, the investigator, the counselor.

We were there 100% for our victims. And that's overwhelming to take on all on your own by one person. So now we have victim advocates. That are actually assigned to the law enforcement unit and they are there to help support those things. Like if a victim calls at midnight and needs a ride somewhere, or if a victim says, Hey, I need to get my birth certificate because the pimp ripped it up in front of me and I need to get an ID so I can get a job.

They help [00:16:00] them with, how to even fill out an application or how do you write a resume? Or how do you do an interview? Some of the basic life skills that we might take for granted, these people missed out on all of that because from, this age to this age, they were stuck in that situation.

So they're kind of like fresh people that are reintegrating back into society and are trying to learn the basic, basic stuff that they never got. And so having someone to stand alongside them through all that process is critical to have a victim advocate, to, be there for them. Okay. So you said you were in this, since 2019.

That doesn't seem enough. No, no, no. I started back in 2008. Okay. With those temporary assignments, with the unit at the time. And then I tested for position and, again, back then it was only one female spot per squad, so it was very competitive. But I made it to the squad and then I stayed pretty much the whole rest [00:17:00] half of my career.

So I was 23 years with Phoenix Police Department and I stayed almost 14 in that one unit. I didn't, leave 'cause I was super happy with what I was doing. It's definitely a long, time to stay in one place, but I really didn't even notice the time was going by 'cause I was too involved in, my cases and getting victims' justice and educating the public and doing all those things.

What are some of the indicators? Yeah, I do have a resource on my website, a chance for awareness.com where I've written these out. But some indicators for you to recognize this may be happening with someone you know. We have, a situation where there's elements of this crime that people can recognize, such as the branding, if you've ever heard of the branding, like putting a tattoo.

So just like a Yellowstone, if you're watching Yellowstone, the Duttons, they put their Y on the cows 'cause they are a rancher and they own those cows. Well, traffickers put their brand or their moniker name or their symbol [00:18:00] tattooed on their victims. And I've seen victims with these tattoos even on their face.

The tattoos have two purposes. One part of this whole system of trafficking and the manipulation is to have this victim believe that they belong to a family of some kind, this trafficking family. And so it is, the tattoo is supposed to mean, you're part of this pimps family, even though there's weirdness that there's other females around all with the same tattoo, all being sexually active with the same trafficker, all doing the same thing.

You're a family. Everyone else outside, if you've ever heard the term square, we're law abiding citizens. We're all squares. Family. And then the second purpose is to advertise to other traffickers. These people, I own them. These ones are mine. And so that they won't be easily taken away. And so the tattoos are an indicator in itself and the way that I would use that when I explain how a normal citizen could recognize that.

Let's say you were in line at the gas station to pay for your coffee and in front of you in the line [00:19:00] you have, three girls all with the same or similar tattoos. They're also dressed provocatively and they're out in the middle of the night and they're of different races and ages, but it seems like they're all together.

That could be an indicator, of trafficking and I'll talk about how to report in a second. But basically. The tattoos are a huge one. Multiple cell phones. Even if the cell phone doesn't have service, if it can get on wifi, they can communicate with their trafficker or sex buyers. Hotel keys.

Lots of hotel keys. Working at night, living with your employer, not having your possession of your own identification or your own phone. The constant control. This is a very isolating crime. You have traffickers that are trying to burn bridges with family and friends. So if you have a person in your life that all of a sudden falls off with communicating with you at all, or if they do communicate, that other person is always around,

That is an indicator in itself. There's many, [00:20:00] many indicators as far as, one or multiple of these things happening to someone you know, that could lean more towards maybe this person's becoming a victim of trafficking. Now what to do with that information is how to report. And so as far as how to report, if you've been to the airport recently, you've probably seen the National Human Trafficking hotline posters in the bathrooms and things.

The national human trafficking hotline's based in DC and I'm not sure where you're based out of, but all the way here in Arizona, DC's kind of far away and it takes a minute if you report something to the national hotline for it to get to the right state, to the right city, to the right detective. It could be two or three days before someone's actually looking at what you were reporting.

So some states like Arizona are coming up with their own state hotline, which is Monitor 24 7. It has, operators of different languages. You can text it, all of those things. So some states are doing that and the hotline has the backline phone number to all of the law enforcement [00:21:00] detective bureaus, the human trafficking units, where you don't even have to go through the regular police patrol, route if you were reporting a crime.

And then 9 1 1, that is what it is for if it's happening right now, or it's a crime in progress. You're not wasting anyone's time. Call 9 1 1 because I've had victims describe where they were in broad daylight waiting at a bus stop and their pimp slapped him in the face and started beating him up and people were there at the bus stop standing next to them.

Cars were driving by and no one did anything. No one called the police at all, and I would rather you. Just call 9 1 1. If you can't remember the hotline number, then not call at all. And certainly don't break out your phone to film it for a TikTok. We need people to report and do the right thing.

You don't have to have the police car come to your house. You can give the information over the phone. Just be available for us to call you back in case you saw something else that you didn't know to tell us. Like you could have noticed that pimp was with another. Whole pimp [00:22:00] and full car, full of victims.

And unless we called you back and said, Hey, did you notice anything else? Was anyone else around? Oh yeah. Matter of fact, I actually saw this. Leave your information so we can call you back. Those kind of things. And that's what I would do to report. Okay. Yeah. Report being helpful in any emergency situation should be.

The first thing people do, I don't like, particularly when I hear stories of people just watching because how, I can't. But yes, report, you're not a snitch. You actually need to report that. Yeah, that, and you don't have to give me your home address. We can use your work address. You can give me a PO box, just, so that we can get ahold of you again in case you did see something else.

That's all that really is about. And if you want to testify, you. Like that, or you can just, [00:23:00] be anonymous. You can definitely be anonymous, give us your information so we can get more details of what you might've witnessed anonymously. Okay. So I'm going back and I'm rewatching all of the NCIS the moment.

And now that you say that, there was one episode I think. There was a famous singer on it, all of his girls had bulldogs on them. It's one of those things, I'm sure there's gonna be lots of instances now that, hearing a little bit of this education about this, that you could look back and not only TV shows, but interactions at Starbucks where you may have witnessed something that, now hopefully you know what to do with that information.

I have a big mouth that can and will get me in trouble at some point. Has before it's fine, but, I get instantly uncomfortable around people yelling and stuff like that, so I, no, that does not mean that I go around calling cops as soon as [00:24:00] I hear a raised voice, but it makes me make sure I have my phone in my hand because if that person does anything besides yell, yes, I am fully prepared to say something to somebody who isn't me, because absolutely I'm not getting in the middle of that fight.

Yes. Yeah. Don't yourself that way. Yeah. If it's a kid or something, I might get myself in even more trouble that way 'cause it's gonna really hurt my body. But, protect the kid and all. But definitely just for tell people, everybody's got this idea that, they automatically are a snitch if they call the cops about anything.

Yeah. The only people who are even the least bit worried about snitches are gangs. And if you are in a gang or a member of a gang, them going to the cops and reporting about the what the group just did, yes, that makes them a snitch. That does not mean you witnessing somebody getting beat up and not doing anything about [00:25:00] it mean that doesn't mean you're a snitch if you call the cops.

That's a totally different instance. Yeah. So most states have a good Samaritan law. So like if you witness a hit and run accident, and you got the license plates or you, jumped out and started trying to give someone CPR and help, you can't be sued or held legally responsible for anything 'cause you were protected under the Good Samaritan Act.

Good Samaritan Law. Yeah. So how, I know at times it probably was frustrating, hard to deal with, but it also at times rewarding to be doing what you were doing, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think the rewarding part comes from, getting victims justice and. Getting these traffickers put in custody so that they can't traffic someone else.

It is a little bit of a difficult [00:26:00] situation though, because now when we put 'em in jail, they have access not only to phone calls, video visits, but now they have tablets and I'm being told those tablets don't have access to the internet. But I know for a fact a hardened criminal can definitely bypass whatever parental controls are on your tablet and get, we got 12 year olds that can bypass parental controls on a phone.

Unfortunate that we, and I'm not sure why we've given them access to all these things. It's supposed to be a punishment to be in prison, not a free ride and everything paid for you and you still have all the pleasures of life. But they do have access to things and there are some traffickers that continue trafficking from within prison and jail.

And so that is a whole other problem that we're experiencing that we need to get a handle on because that is absolutely happening.

Phones were bad enough, but at least they were recorded. Yes, they are recorded. Yeah, everything's pretty much recorded. It's just [00:27:00] they gave them, all these means to communicate with the outside, but then they didn't increase the amount of, officers there at the jail that are jail intelligence that listened to those phone calls or look for, indicators of not only sex trafficking, but

murder for hire and all kinds of other crimes that are still going on, even though someone's incarcerated. And so the manpower isn't, lifted up as to, to deal with the amount of, devices and opportunities they have to continue to commit crimes. It's a definite difficult job, but if you're interested in getting in law enforcement, that's also another part of law enforcement that you could, go into.

As far as the business, that is something I'm learning because I am a police officer, not a business person. I've never gone to. School for business or anything like that. So learning how to build a website, learning about email marketing, learning about social media and being consistent and trying to be everywhere has been, a challenge for sure that I've been educating myself through [00:28:00] YouTube University on a daily basis.

But I think I'm getting a handle on it and, I think it's going good. For your business, when did that start? So I retired from the police department in October of 2021, and I actually went to another law enforcement agency, but I was kind of bored over there. Hopefully I don't ever listen to this, but, I was,

Not doing human trafficking anymore. So I was still passionate about all of the things I had experienced and all of this knowledge that I had and that I wanted to share with not only the public, but other law enforcement. And so I started my business where I was doing consulting with law enforcement agencies as far as how to do these undercover operations and the training.

And then I've expanded it obviously into two missions, really the community awareness piece, which is huge for me also because I want, businesses to realize that they need to, learn and educate about human [00:29:00] trafficking, about sex trafficking, not only for, them being. Parents as well as people who are in the community, but also, sex buyers are predominantly men and sometimes men who are a part of, regular businesses attend conferences and they think what happens at the conference stays at the conference.

And they go order up a girl and they're actually contributing to the sex trafficking problem by participating in the demand. And so educating, 'cause a lot of men don't realize that they're doing that. They think they're just, buying a girl for an hour. So the education and then, the law enforcement training where I'm trying to teach other female undercovers.

Female officers to even wanna be an undercover. 'cause that's a whole other thing. And how to do it safely and effectively is the other part of it. And then I wrote a book also because, when I'm traveling around doing these community presentations, I'm constantly being asked by the audience, especially when I tell them that, when I [00:30:00] first started investigating human trafficking.

The national average age of entry into human trafficking was 15 years old, and today it's 13 years old and it's inching closer and closer to 11 and 12 years old. And so it's getting worse. And then, with the means of the internet and social media and apps and the games, we need to have parents have these conversations.

With their kids. And so I get asked all the time, well, how do we have that conversation? And so that's what I wrote my book about. It's called Talk to Them And it's about talking to your kids about online safety, about the digital threats that they face. Not just sex trafficking, but sextortion, Luing a minor for sex, some of the other digital dangers that parents don't even know about.

And I kind of modeled it after as a forensic interviewer how I would. Get, I might have some skill if I can get victims to tell me about their worst day, in the moment of when they think they're going to [00:31:00] jail, how to, of, how to have this difficult conversation, with their kids. And these prevention conversations have to happen more than once.

They have to happen before you give them access to these devices. And they need to include information about not if, but when this happens because these traffickers, and I know this as a female undercover, because I have seven Facebooks for Instagrams. These are outside of my business, tagged. Meet me, bumble, plenty of fish, Snapchat, TikTok, all in undercover personas.

I call it catfishing pimps. And I've had traffickers try and recruit and groom me all the way from Orlando, Florida to Arizona, and I'm skilled enough as a female undercover to have conversations with them to get the elements of a crime. And then we extradite them to, charge face the judge for their crime.

And in getting my evidence of our conversation, I've done a warrant for our conversation on Facebook or on Snapchat. I've seen that [00:32:00] the message that was initially sent to me was copied and pasted to hundreds of other profiles, all female and not just local. Nationally, these guys are just sitting on their butt at the house.

They have no normal job. The only job they have is manage the victims they have right now and find new ones. 'cause that's how they're gonna make more and more money. And they're copying and pasting these messages. And so I know that these messages are coming in to the private messages of our kids because I've seen it.

That's why I want parents to talk to their kids about this happening so that they can recognize it happening when it happens, and then go tell their parent about it. And so that's the whole idea behind why I wrote the book, and I'm having it translated in Spanish. And read in, audibly in Spanish as well, so that way I can reach parents that may not speak English and may not know about all these online threats that their kids are facing.

And I know traffickers are looking for those kids [00:33:00] because it's a vulnerability in itself that their parents don't understand English and they don't know what's going on. So very important to me to get that book in as many people's hands as possible. Okay. We'll put a link up for that in the description.

Yeah. So something I've noticed lately, just because, I have my Facebook and, I keep getting messages from people who sound human at first and then turn into chat, GPT if you talk to them for more than a minute. And it's kinda like, okay, you're not cool. Bye-bye. Or you always get those fake people who have the profiles and their name is very foreign and their profile only has rocks.

Yeah.

Yeah. They're, they'll be, then they have two friends of mine and I'm like, how are you two? That [00:34:00] stupid. Yeah, don't do that. Yes. Even that, yeah, there's lots and lots of scams out there and that's where Sextortion is also very concerning. Especially those individuals that are in other countries.

And I don't know if you've seen the picture, but there's a picture out there, like, looks like a, a foreign person. With a whole switchboard of phone lines. And, the caption is that they're trying to, reach out to as many kids as possible. And what they're doing is they're trying to get them to take inappropriate pictures of themselves and then send that image to who they think is a peer.

Or someone that's interested in them in a relationship and then they flip it around and say, you owe me $5,000 tomorrow or I'm going to blast this picture out to all your friends and family and your school and everything. And we have kids that are unliving themselves over this because they don't have five grand and they're afraid of their parents getting mad at them 'cause they told them not to take pictures and it's really, really scary.

And they're targeting boys actually a lot more than girls on [00:35:00] that. First of all, don't share naked picks with nobody. Nobody should have them ever at any time. No matter what your age is, nobody should have that. Certainly don't go posting some of your, naked selves to people who do not want them.

But if you were being harassed basically for an image, that is somebody who should be blocked, not given an image. Absolutely. Yeah. And then there's, entities that you can report those platforms, those profiles. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has the Take It Down program, and you can report those profiles to them.

Yes, making sure that any child who has access to the internet knows that, first of all, not everybody online likes you. Yeah. And if somebody starts harassing you and make you feel really bad about yourself, they need to be blocked, not kept around. Allow your child the knowledge [00:36:00] so that they know that if somebody's harassing them, they can block them without being in trouble.

Nobody's gonna be mad at them because if they're being bullied online for any reason, no thank you. Blocked them. And these are not people you know in real life. They're not even, though Facebook says they're friends, the word friends is no longer mean friends. It's someone you know in real life that's a friend, even if they are somebody, you know?

Yeah, true. Or it says that they're somebody. There's so many things you like, there's so many caveats that you could add to things that it's just don't do naked, nothing. Unless no naked nothing. Yep. And not taking pictures or nothing else of it. Because if you don't know this, even famous people stuff get leaked and then it's everywhere.

Yeah. So maybe don't do that to yourself. Yeah. And then there's also the whole deep fakes with, [00:37:00] AI generated images with your face on them. So that's where, I encourage parents not to actually share pictures of their kids. On social media, if it's a, if it's an open to the public profile, I mean, if it's your lockdown profile and you know that these are just family and friends that you actually know in real life, then that would be okay.

But if it's an open to the public profile, that's where, anything you post can be stolen from anywhere and used and repurposed and used for harm. My sister has a lockdown Instagram so that, grandparents can still get images of the kids and stuff, but that's it. Like they know exactly who is friends with that account and nobody else is allowed.

Yes. Okay. And again, this is starting to happen to younger and younger, so even if at the moment they're at 13. A year from now, you could be dealing with a 10-year-old. So teach them as soon as you give [00:38:00] them the electronic device so that they know not only this, but in the future, they know that too. So no matter when it happens, they know what to do.

They have those actions that they've proven, they know how to do already in their brain. Yeah. Otherwise they're not gonna know what to do and yeah. I call it self policing themselves, so they can recognize when a creeper is in their messages and stop talking to them and tell their parents about it.

My sister, I was just talking to her last night, they don't have secrets in their house. Yeah, there's no such thing as secrets. You can have a something special. We're in a week from now, mommy's birthday is happening, so we're gonna do something special for her. We can't tell mommy about it until that day 'cause it's something special.

So that's different. But there's no secrets that way. The kid doesn't learn that, oh, everybody has secrets and I can have a [00:39:00] secret from mommy and it's not gonna mean anything because they do mean something. That's information somebody's trying to hide, which means that there's somebody who's not trustworthy.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent agree. And in the book, I do talk about secrets and I talk about, the other things that creepers do, like telling the kids to delete messages or speak in some kind of code or use an emoji if mom walks in the room. All of those kind of things. Those things are tools that they, that the bad guy will use.

And if you've told your kid about that, they're gonna recognize that happening, and then they'll tell you about it. That's the whole idea. Yeah, that's how we've gotten to the point where we know if somebody, a guy, a couple right in front of us and the guy goes, no, you can't talk to that person.

Everybody at that table is gonna look over at them and go, excuse me. You know what I mean? Everybody's gonna rub our neck because everybody knows somebody's about to go off. [00:40:00] Yeah. That's how we all learn those things is somebody else went, Hey, I had this happen. Don't let that happen to you, and now we've got this built up knowledge that helps nobody, nobody defeated Roman a day or whatever.

Right? Yeah. It's, you have to piecemeal things and everybody gets a bit of the information and shares it, and that way the next person doesn't get as hurt as the next person. Yes. Absolutely.

So your business, what was the name of it again? A Chance for awareness.com. Okay. And that helps with resources . Yeah, so I have on their online classes, I have a class about human trafficking. I call it the power of Awareness. And it's my evolution as I've witnessed this problem over the last 16 years.

Again, like I had. Kind of talked about how our, our response to it changed. And then, you know, it talks about how victims [00:41:00] fall into this lifestyle, how traffickers recruit and groom, and how buyers participate in the demand. And then I do talk about the indicators. And where and how to report.

And then I also talk about getting involved in the fight yourself if you want to, without being a vigilante. 'cause we do have some people that, are doing their own little child predator operations for Instagram and TikTok. And all those things are resulting in, first of all, we're not gonna be able to charge that crime.

You can't just do the sexy undercover operation and hand the sober to the police here go and arrest this person. It actually has to be witnessed and the undercover part of it, that has to be a sworn police officer doing that. It's in the law book. It's actually impersonating a police officer if you're doing it on your own.

But it's also making it harder for us to do this stuff because these guys are getting ed up and they don't wanna be on TikTok ex, on a viral video, by someone's TikTok. And, we've had instances where kids were trying to do that and they end up, smashing the window of the [00:42:00] guy's car.

And now who's in trouble? Real, really? Here it's the kids that smashed the window and committed criminal damage and. Yes, you were saying all this, but there's no evidence of all of this. And he showed up and he can say, he just drove through the parking lot and he threw a window, a rock at his window.

So it is, not helping the situation to be a vigilante. So getting involved means getting involved with reporting, getting involved with voting for, stricter punishments with these people. We just passed a bill here in Arizona where it's a life sentence. If you traffic a kid in Arizona. That happened because of voters getting involved.

You can volunteer, you can collect donations. A lot of times when I rescue a victim, they have literally the clothes on their back, which a lot of times they're not even wearing undergarments and they have, the stuff they're worried about. In the hotel room, which is their makeup and their toiletries.

And, if I was to be able to offer them, these donations that you [00:43:00] got for the police officers to offer a backpack of like flip flops, a hairbrush, toothpaste, makeup remover, wipes, you know, uh, clean underwear, a hoodie. Then I could say, here's your stuff. Don't worry about what's back at the hotel.

You have new stuff and you know this is all yours. It's not what the pimp lets you have. And it goes a long way to be able to do those things, but we need community groups to come forward. I. Collect those donations and bring them in. And then people to donate their time to do those things like the transportation of victims that need to go get their id, or need to go to the social security office to get their, replacement social security card or drive them to a job interview or those kind of things.

You could volunteer in that way. Or volunteer at one of the placements. There's a lot of, nonprofit organizations that have shelters so that when we get a victim out of the life, we have a place to take them that's safe. And those places are always looking for people though [00:44:00] to help and get involved.

So there's lots of things you can do to get involved in the fight. Okay. Something you just said that triggered a memory of some kind in my brain. Which is interesting. Everybody can think, oh, well they can just go back to their parents or wherever they came from. In some cases, the reason why they are where they are is because of parents, uncles, whoever, and it may not be safe for them to go back.

Yeah, absolutely. Especially for juveniles, who repeatedly run away. They're running away from something going on at home. So home may not be where we can return them to when we rescue them. So yes, we need placement and Arizona is ahead of the game. But we don't have a placement for boys.

We don't have a placement for kids in transition if there's kids in transition. So we are still behind in that regard as far as . Enough beds and enough placement for victims of all, issues. We don't really have a lot of placement [00:45:00] for a pregnant kid or a placement for a kid that's coming off of serious drugs.

It's really difficult, case by case. And having groups and community members come forward to create those places and safe places for victims is also a way to help.