Thanks to the efforts of Congresswoman Jackie Speier and former flight attendant Nancy Rivard, San Francisco International Airport will become the first hub in the country to have staff trained to identify and stop human trafficking. Rivard, who used to work for American Airlines, started the non-profit Airline Ambassadors after realizing that the airline industry has simplified the work of domestic sex traffickers and those who seek to exploit children.
Rivard and her group were on hand yesterday to train industry employees to spot warning signs like young children boarding alone, especially those who are "afraid of uniformed security, unsure of where they’re going, [feeling] frightened, ashamed or nervous." Warning signs that should seem obvious, but according to Rivard and Speier go unrecognized all too often. As the Congresswoman from San Mateo explained, "It is a problem domestically and internationally. We probably have between 100,000 and 300,000 runaways and foster kids that become victims of sex trafficking in this country."
Here is CBS5's Dana King, pointing out that human trafficking isn't always what we expect from the movies:
[CBS5]