With a heroic and observant deed, a flight attendant from Alaska Airlines named Shelia Fedrick ended up rescuing a teenage female away from a human trafficker. The 49-year-old Fedrick states she was carrying out a regular flight shift on Seattle to San Francisco as she noticed a somewhat unkempt younger teenage woman in the window spot beside a much older man.
As Fedrick approached the two passengers, it became more obvious that the girl looked very weathered and Fedrick even said she appeared like she “had been through pure hell”. There was a big difference between the girl and the man beside her as he was well dressed and tidy. When Fedrick spoke to the couple, only the man looked at her, the teenager didn’t react.
The Daily Mail reported that Fedrick knew something didn’t seem right, and the male passenger even became somewhat aggressive when Fedrick was pushing a bit for more dialogue. This is when Fedrick informed the pilot and made a move to give the female victim a sign to excuse herself to the bathroom. In the bathroom, the victim affixed a note on the mirror which described that she was indeed in trouble. Fedrick claimed, “She wrote on the note she needed help.” As the pilot notified police, law enforcement accosted the trafficking perpetrator when the plane landed.
Anti-trafficking organization Airline Ambassadors International reports that Fedrick’s actions follow closely in line with what flight attendants are taught on the matter of how to detect a human trafficking situation.