An American Airlines employee at Sacramento International Airport saved the lives of two teenage girls who were about to be slaves.
Customer service agent Denice Miracle became concerned when two Vacaville-Fairfield teens, aged 15 and 17, came to her ticket counter on August 31.
With no IDs, the girls had no adults with them and had two first class tickets booked, to New York, by an additional person.
Customer service agent Denice Miracle became concerned when two Vacaville-Fairfield teens, aged 15 and 17, came to her ticket counter on August 31
But the tickets were brought with a fraudulent credit card, according to an airline press release obtained by the Sacbee.com.
‘Between the two of them, they had a bunch of small bags. It seemed to me as if they were running away from home,’ Miracle said in the release.
‘They kept looking at each other in a way that seemed fearful and anxious. I had a gut feeling that something just wasn’t right.’
And when the agent refused to fly the two girls, they went to make a call at a nearby Starbucks.
With no IDs, the girls had no adults with them and had two first class tickets booked, to New York, by an additional person named ‘Drey’
Miracle preemptively called the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department’s Airport Bureau.
She got a hold of Deputy Todd Sanderson, who shared that the two teens had called a man named ‘Drey’ who they had been in contact with on Instagram.
According to Sanderson, Drey had planned to fly the girls out and pay them $2,000 to be music video models.
But things seemed strange when it was noticed that return flights weren’t booked for back to Sacremento, which the girls had not been aware of.
They hadn’t told their parents about the offer.
And when the agent refused to fly the two girls, they went to make a call at a nearby Starbucks, contacting ‘Drey’
‘When I told them that they didn’t have a flight home, that’s when it kind of sunk in that maybe I was actually telling the truth,’ Sanderson added.
‘In my opinion, what was going to happen was they were going to go back to New York and become victims of sex trafficking. They said they wouldn’t have let that happen, and I said they probably wouldn’t have had a choice.’
Drey’s instagram page was deleted within minutes of the girl’s call to him at Starbucks. Calls also would not go through.
Sanderson asserts that Drey probably used photos of a different person and that the case would likely not be persecuted.
The two girls flew home with their parents on that Thursday.
“I’m very, very thankful Ms. Miracle with American Airlines was able to use her intuition and concern and actually say something,” Sanderson said.
“Without her, I wouldn’t have been called and we wouldn’t have intervened with these girls.”