An Alaskan Airlines flight attendant has proved an unlikely hero after reportedly saving a girl from human trafficking.
Sheila Fedrick noticed a young girl on one of her flights back in 2011 who looked particularly disheveled and looked out of place with the well-dressed older man she as travelling with.
“(The girl) looked like she had been through pure hell,” Fedrick told 10 News, estimating the girl’s age at around 14 or 15 years old.
Convinced something wasn’t quite right, Fedrick managed to tell the girl under her breath to go to the bathroom where she had left a note for her.
“I left a note in one of the bathrooms,” Fedrick told NBC News. “She wrote back on the note and said, ‘I need help.'”
Federick then altered the pilot who alerted police who were waiting at the terminal when the flight touched down.
“I’ve been a flight attendant for ten years and its like I am going all the way back to when I was in training and I was like I could have seen these young girls and young boys and didn’t even know,” Frederick said.
“If you see something, say something,” she urged.
NBC reports that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 2000 human traffickers and identified 400 victims last year alone.
Flight crews in the US are now being trained to look for signs of human trafficking through the initiative Airline Ambassadors