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Awareness of the problem and patterns of human trafficking has increased significantly in recent years, leading to efforts to train those who work in fields that often intersect with that form of crime -- such as the lodging and transportation industries -- to be aware of the common signs of human trafficking activity. Groups such as Airline Ambassadors International (AAI) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA), for example, help educate flight attendants to keep an eye out for passengers (particularly youngsters) who exhibit the following potential signs of being victims of traffickers: That awareness reportedly paid off in the case of Alaska Airlines flight attendant Shelia Fedrick, whose reported quick thinking in helping to assist a trafficking victim on a flight in 2011 has since been immortalized in a social media meme: Public knowledge of Fedrick's supposed thwarting of a human trafficking event and rescuing of a young female victim came almost exclusively from a glowing February 2017 NBC News account: Such news reports seemed to be straightforward and heartwarming accounts of one very tangible success stemming from human trafficking awareness training among flight crews, one that most readers accepted at face value. Other more skeptical commenters, however, expressed curiosity that all the reporting on the occurrence seemed to stem from a single source (NBC News), the incident didn't hit the news until six years after it took place, accounts of the tale lacked resolution, and the story's details proved impossible to independently verify. For example, when aviation and travel journalist Christine Negroni reported on an incident in which a couple traveling by air with their adoptive daughter were wrongly suspected of being human traffickers by a flight attendant, she noted of the Shelia Fedrick case that: Writing in Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown observed that 2017 news coverage of the then six-year-old incident seemed to come out of the blue, and the timing appeared more than coincidental: Brown, like Negroni before her, also noted that news reports of the girl's supposed in-flight rescue from human traffickers were scant on detail and follow-up, and that none of the entities involved with the story -- such as the San Francisco police, the San Francisco airport, Alaska airlines, or the flight attendant herself -- would or could provide any corroborating information: Not only was news reporting on this incident lacking any information about the perpetrator and his fate, but about the putative victim as well. How old was she? Where was she from? How did she come to fall into the hands of a human trafficker? (Was she abducted, a runaway, or an adventurous youngster lured by the promise of an enticing job?) Why was the young woman — said to now be a college-age adult who remains in touch with Ms. Fedrick — not seen or referenced (even anonymously) in the story at all? Like those before us, we have also been stymied in our attempts to obtain any verifying information about the 2011 human trafficking episode. Alaska Airlines told us that they cannot comment on that incident and that they can't put us in touch with Shelia because she no longer works for Alaska. Kalhan Rosenblatt (who did the original reporting on Shelia Fedrick for NBC News) hasn't responded to our request for comment. We also contacted Christine Negroni and Elizabeth Nolan Brown to find out if either had learned anything more about the story since the publication of their original skeptical reports, and they both told us that corroboration remained elusive. Perhaps, as Brown suggested, this tale has some elements of truth to it, but the lack of detail indicates the outcome of the case might not have matched the positive one readers were left to assume: Either way, as she concluded, We can't know, because no one will provide any specifics, nor even confirm or deny that the incident occurred.
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