EP 86 Things can get better with Heidi Huppert

This episode contains references to traumatic topics including triggers, domestic abuse, and human trafficking. Listener discretion is advised. We'll be right back. There was 10 years where I was just straight professional. I didn't disclose any of this information. That wasn't how I wanted to be defined. But I'm at the point in my life where I see how much strength is in this for me. And then other people have told me that. The voyeurism is for sure real.

You know, if you start talking about this stuff and somebody lights up like a Christmas tree, you know that you're not in good company. So that's a that's definitely a thing um i think though if if i would have had uh an adult in my life that would have been like hey kids not always going to be like this like you can get out of this um i think i would have been you know way better off so maybe i can do that for somebody else.

That was Heidi Hubert, and in this episode, co-host Aurora Ford and I talk to Heidi. Aurora is a former journalist and currently works at Covenant House Alaska. Heidi is the chief program officer at Covenant House. Heidi's perspective on homelessness in Alaska is unique, because in her younger years, she spent time on the streets of Anchorage. Her mom had a violent and abusive boyfriend, and Heidi didn't feel safe at home.

So one night, after an especially brutal domestic situation, she found herself wandering around Spenard, trying to figure out what she was going to do. She was about 12 years old, and she had school in the morning. Because it was open, and because it was familiar, she ended up just hanging out at McDonald's. She says that, for a long time, she didn't tell her story. It was just too hard to relive those memories, and the violence and the pain that came with them.

But right now, she's at a point in her life where she sees how much power and strength there is in telling her story. How it can potentially help a young person understand that they might be in the middle of the worst moment, or moments of their life. But it won't last forever. Things can get better.

Heidi says the issues of homelessness and human trafficking, another issue she deals with a lot at work, are ones that we have to care about because they involve young people and they are the future of Alaska. They will one day hold the political, economic, and social power. So if we want the state to be healthy, we have to care about what is happening to our young people. So here she is, Heidi Hooper.

Welcome to Chatter Marks, a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, dedicated to exploring Alaska and the circumpolar north through the creative and critical thinking of ideas, past, present, and future. Music. My name is Cody Liska, and I'll be your host. Heidi is my co-worker at Covenant House Alaska. Heidi, you've been pretty open, pretty public about how tough things were for you growing up. And a number of those stories as your friend have been really shocking for me to hear.

Like living for a whole summer homeless at the Bird Creek campground when no one noticed you girls down there, or the fact that your first interaction with Covenant House staff was when they found you sleeping in a graveyard. That just seems like a lot of really perfect storm of systemic failures that blow my mind. And I thought maybe if you could talk about how, How you ended up homeless at such a young age. Well, I mean, you speak of a perfect storm.

I think that was sort of the layout for my entirety of being in Alaska. My folks moved up here when I was an infant, and we were pretty much homeless as soon as we got here and staying in shelters and camping and things like that. And then a variety of different like low income housing kind of situations for, you know, people in poverty. So, you know, really, I mean, things were kind of set up like that from the get go.

And when you live in those spaces, I think that you have a lot of external factors that have to do with poverty and that experience that is sort of, you know, they don't set you up for success, that's for sure. Um, and becoming homeless for me, you know, some of it had to do with my, my family and things when I was little, um, I didn't have any control over that.

Uh, but when I was kind of a preteen, you know, my, my first experience into homelessness where I was on my own, I was in junior high school. I went to Romey junior high and, um, and really I became homeless because I was leaving my home because it wasn't safe for me to be there. There was a lot of domestic violence going on in that home, and police were showing up all the time.

And there was a few instances of violence in that household where it was – I had cops tell me, like, you're going to foster care, kid. And that wasn't something that I was going to risk. So I would take off. Heidi, I read this article you wrote, and you said that you eventually made your way to Covenant House, you know, after leaving an abusive household. And at Covenant House, you were given a safe space to sleep, but you lied to the staff about everything, including your name.

Were you lying because you wanted to remain anonymous, or did you feel like you had something to hide? I absolutely had something to hide. And I think that this is something that affects a lot of young people. But when you experience system failures in the way that I did, so my mother was in a domestic violence situation, and she did all the right things. She got the restraining orders.

She did everything she could to protect us. But oftentimes, you know, her partner, her ex-partner would show back up after being picked up by the police for violating the restraining order, and he'd break into our home again.

And after a while it got so routine it was just it was like an annoyance i mean i remember the looks on the cops faces when they would were like oh god this place again and they would pick him up and a lot of times they didn't take him to jail they just dropped him off somewhere else so he would come back and um and my mom was in danger so so much of the time and my mom is a little Mexican lady. And she's so tiny. And to think that she's going to have to fight this man, it was terrifying for me.

So the idea of being in foster care was something, you know, I used to fantasize about going into a home where there would be people that could like help you with your homework and like cared if you got that school project done. I really did want that for myself, but I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself if I felt like I wasn't there if something happened to her. So it was a protective capacity for her. And that's a story and a secret that kids carry with them, I feel like.

You just said that your mom took all of the necessary precautions, but those precautions weren't enough. Absolutely. I mean, he was never arrested for violating the restraining orders. So no matter how many you get, you know, end of the day, it's a piece of paper. And somebody who's psychotic or has it in their head that they're going to hurt you, you know, they really don't care about that. And you're kind of just doing a paper trail.

But even then, you know, they would pick him up and they'd just drop him off somewhere else in town and, you know, with a stern warning. But he'd be right back. Yeah, I wonder what the answer to that is. Have we gotten better about that? Have authorities recognized that that's not the answer? That's a bit of a yes and. I think that we now have things that we didn't have before. We have sexual assault stalking orders now that offer protection. That wasn't the thing we had before.

We have permanent restraining orders, you know, things like that. I think there's a lot more knowledge about domestic violence and that cycle and what people go through in general. But if you talk to a victim of stalking now, I think the overwhelming majority is like, yeah, people don't know enough about this. Okay. Okay.

And if you're comfortable with this, and let me know if you're not, but to have a broader view, a more full picture of what your home life is. Could you or would you mind maybe explaining one of those situations in which you decided to leave? You know, that you were like, this is enough, I'm out of here. Well, the... I think one of those situations was we had freshly renewed a restraining order.

And back then, I mean, we're talking in 1990s, like early 90s, we had freshly renewed a restraining order with a magistrate. My mother is lower functioning. So a lot of the times I was doing all the talking. So again, I'm like in junior high school, I'm doing all the paperwork, I'm doing all the talking in front of the magistrate. We get the paperwork. It's all done. There's a clear history of violence there and police reports and all these other things.

And on our way home, my mom's driving. And I said, you know what? I've got a bad feeling. I feel like he's there. I don't know why I thought that. But she agreed. And we called the police for an escort on the way. So we got to the house and the police were already there waiting for us. And he had broken into the home already and had trashed it and threw all of our stuff out the window. And it was just chaos. And they take him away.

So we would hope that he would be arrested, but honestly, we didn't have a lot of faith that he would be arrested. But the police did take him away. So we clean up our apartment, we get everything back together. I'd become habituated to like sleeping with my clothes on and my like little Sears combat boots, you know, thank goodness for the grunge of the 90s. So I was constantly like in a state where I was ready, ready essentially to like defend us.

Well, that night again, we woke up to him breaking the front door down, just like splittering cracks of wood and he's getting in the house.

So we wake up and we're like, oh, he's back. and we start barricading ourselves in a room and then he starts breaking through that door and he gets through the door he gets through the dresser he's attacking my mom this huge fight ensues um i'm doing everything i can i'm like a 13 year old girl not even 100 pounds, and um and she's you know my mom's this little mexican lady and we're trying to fight this grown man and i'm doing everything i can because i'm pretty sure he's going to kill her and,

And a neighbor calls the police, the police show up and, you know, they have this look of like annoyance on them, like, oh, we're here again. And, and just absolute dismissal over this carnage that just occurred in this house. The walls are covered in blood, there's teeth on the floor, and they're looking at us like we're a huge pain in the ass, you know, so, so they, and they also arrest my mom. So they arrest him, they arrest my mom, and they're carting the two of them out.

And an officer looks at me and says, go pack a bag, kid, you're going into foster care tonight. And, and I'm, you know, I just got done having them take pictures of my face. You know, my knuckles are bloody. I've just gone through this, this like war. And then they're telling me I'm going to foster care, which is I don't know what's going to happen. So if he gets out, if my mom gets out, what if I'm somewhere else and I can't protect her?

So I, you know, in my head, I'm like, well, nuts to that. I'm climbing out the window. So that was one of the first nights that I took off. And I just spent the night walking around Midtown, Spenard area, Anchorage, trying to figure out, you know, what I'm going to do, you know. And I got school in the morning, too. Right. So. Sure. Yeah. I think I end up hanging out at that McDonald's on Benson because at the time they were open 24 hours.

Does it bother you telling those stories anymore, Heidi? I know you've processed my impression. We know each other pretty well at this point. My impression is that you sort of processed a lot of this childhood trauma in such a way that it's not really so much of a problem anymore. but does it ever... Does it ever hurt? I think that really depends on the day. I mean, sometimes it's good to tell these things because I know that there's other kids out there that are experiencing that at home.

And if a story like this can help them, you know, then I'm all for it. But some days, honestly, like, I don't feel like talking about it. I don't want people to know about it. But there was a lot of system failure that occurred in my life, but there was also a lot of me not allowing that system to help. I mean, it's not like I went to school and told teachers, right? I kept this secret. I couldn't risk going into foster care.

And there was a lot of shame, too. I was an honors student. I wanted to have my time fixated on boys and nirvana and not stuff like this. So it was like I was kind of posing to try to have a normal life. You know, Heidi, Aurora and I interviewed Josie... Hayano, who is a member of the United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, and she talked about how she doesn't tell her personal story of human trafficking because of a few reasons.

One of those reasons is because she doesn't want the worst thing that happened to her to be one of her defining characteristics. Another reason is because of the voyeuristic people who feed off hearing tragic stories. I know your story is different than her story, but why do you think you're okay and comfortable with telling your story? I think that that's up to the individual person. I didn't tell my story for a very long time.

I mean, most people don't know that about me and didn't know that about me for ages and ages. And even when I had started working in social services, there was 10 years where I was just straight professional. I didn't disclose any of this information. That wasn't how I wanted to be defined. But I'm at the point in my life where I see how much strength is in this for me. And then other people have told me that.

The voyeurism is for sure real. you know if you start talking about this stuff and somebody lights up like a christmas tree you know that you're not in good company so that's a that's definitely a thing um i think though, if if i would have had uh an adult in my life that would have been like hey kids not always going to be like this like you can get out of this um i think i would have been you know way better off so maybe i can do that for somebody else.

One of the things that we wanted to ask you was about the issue of historical trauma and how that component specifically plays into the issue of human trafficking in Alaska. Well, I think that first off, the idea of historical trauma, I feel like is problematic because it sets people up to think of this idea that this is like ancient history. You know, when you think history, you're thinking like, oh, this happened like a really long time ago.

But when I think of, you know, growing up here in Alaska, my friends, some of my friends' parents that are Native went to boarding schools. You know, I'm what, like 42 years old. That's not that old. That's not that long ago. It's not. So we talk about this historical trauma, but like this is very recent history. And like, what do you think is going to happen to people that have experienced institutional abuse, abuse from the churches, and then just racism in the community?

So I think that all those things play a huge role in increasing the vulnerabilities of any population. And it's unfortunate that there's just this like front row, sort of the rest of us kind of witnessing that unfold. But oftentimes, I don't think like, why is this happening? I think like, of course, this is happening. Mm-hmm. and the higher somebody's vulnerabilities are, the easier they are to exploit.

And unfortunately, when you have populations of people that are experiencing homelessness or mental health issues or just desperation, whatever it might be, the odds are just stacking against them for predators whose full-time job it is to seek them out and exploit them.

Yeah um you and i have talked about this a little before i think we share this sentiment but i feel like it's important to highlight why this is an issue that should matter to people in general i think there are a lot of folks out there and understandably so you know like we we have um we have a threshold for the number of things issues in the world at large especially being exposed to so many of them now that we have social media

um i think a lot of folks out there are very If it's not my kids, it's not my problem. Or alternatively, that they only seem to care about this issue when it's related to quote unquote innocent children. So my question to you is, why should people who don't care, care about it? Well, I don't think this is an issue where you have the option to not care about this. I mean, we're talking about the future of our state, and that's an economic situation.

If we want our state to be healthy, we have to care about what is happening to our young people here. We have to care about their involvement in the industries that make this state run. And if we don't have anything for our young people, our young people are experiencing problems and we're just like, well, you know, figure it out, kid. That's just not good enough. And I care about this state and I choose to live here. I want to live here. I want to see the health of it.

And I know that there are a lot of other people who do, too. So, you know, you can't bury your head in the sand towards these issues because ultimately it's going to affect you. It's coming down one way or another. You will feel that crunch when you can't hire people or when the emergency room is packed with people who are there for all sorts of things. I mean, there's an effect that works both ways. So in my mind, this is so much more than just a social issue.

I mean, this is an economic issue. It's an educational issue. And it's about the health of our community in its entirety, really. I ran into a cranky lady at the Huffman grocery store the other day who was just crabbing up a storm about how there weren't enough people working there and like, why does nobody want to work anymore?

And I do feel like there are folks at times that are out of touch with how some of these issues that we're talking about now do sort of, they bleed into everything and all of our lives and our ability to continue as normal. I have a quick question for you, Aurora. Heidi, you were born into this and you said that your family moved to Alaska and they were homeless and you were homeless. And so, so it's this, I guess, pervasive thing for you, but I wonder,

um, Aurora, did you pay attention to this stuff before you started working at Covenant House? Yeah. Um, no, no, I had no idea. Really. So, you know, we, it's a little backstory. Cody used to be my boss. He was my editor at the Anchorage Press for a time before him, David Holthouse and Susie Buchanan, shout out. And I, I, in working for the press, I was, I ended up eventually,

of course, writing a lot of stories about homelessness. And I had never, I just had, I didn't know anything about anything. I was very naive. And as a result of writing some of those stories, that was how I ended up at Covenant House in the first place.

Once I learned more about what was going on in my community and started to see all of these things that I had somehow been overlooking up to that point in my life, my mid-30s, that was when I decided to go work for Allison at Covenant House, and that's when I met Heidi. And in very quick succession in getting to know her and some of the rest of the staff, but Hyde in particular, she taught me a lot in a short period of time. And it was very like drinking from a fire hose. Okay.

It was intense. It has remained intense, but going from sort of my upbringing where I didn't see many of these things on a day-to-day basis—. To learning about it all at once was yeah that was really interesting which reminds me cody if you don't mind um how did how did this begin for you when did you realize what was going on.

I i think that had a lot to do with where i grew up um you know when back then we used terms like pimp or getting put to work um so when i was growing up you know when you're a kid and you play that whole like floor is lava game we had the same thing for like our trailer park or the apartment complex as we lived in that was like yeah don't go over to that trailer because those guys are like rocking up crack and don't go over here because they'll put you to

work and don't go over here so we we had like no-go zones um for a lot of the places that we lived and um you know on the Dirty 30, I lived in between two gang-controlled, like, rival gangs, essentially, in that spot. And I was also down the street from the Paradise Inn, which was notorious for illegal activities that were going on there.

So, you had, like, small street-level kind of, like, bad guys that were, like, taking advantage of girls and putting them to work or pimping them out but then you also had this like organized very organized crime situation with with tactics that were very intentional and and grooming behaviors where they were you know just predators on the street like this is what they were doing for work nobody knew exactly what was going on there but we all knew that it was essentially bigger and.

Than what we ever thought it was. And I had known, especially in my work, that this was occurring all over the place. And I even remember having a moment with a co-worker of mine where, you know, we watched too much CSI, and we are going to figure this out.

And we have drawn circles and maps and all these things with locations, victims, and potential predators on a wall and we were trying to connect the dots essentially and we're trying to figure this out with this information that we have and we come we come to the conclusion that these situations are actually not connected this is all like like spokes on a wheel for at the it was 26 different situations um in which this trafficking was occurring trafficking a sex trafficking situation So,

you know, what we were, I think it dawned on me then, like, this is so much bigger and this is being run by all different factions of organized crime and individuals. And to clarify my earlier question associated with this to Aurora, I, like you, was also not aware of what an issue this was. And then I have done much less research than you at this point because of your work at Covenant House, Aurora, but I have written articles about sex trafficking.

I have done interviews about similar things. And so now I'm more aware of it. But, you know, that person that you you saw at the grocery store, you know, and they're angry and they are maybe living in a different world. I find myself like.

Being more sympathetic to those people in a way, you know, I don't want to be too sympathetic, but more sympathetic than I was when I was younger, because, you know, I think that Heidi, Aurora, you both have this, this really special insight into that world that other people don't have.

Yeah um and heidi and i have a co-worker um her name's randy and she said something really wise to me at one point at least i thought it was and i try and keep this in mind um because i have a tendency to get pretty fired up when people don't know what's going on or they don't care you know they're just bitching about not getting customer service at the grocery store fast enough and i just want to be like don't you see what's going on um uh but i refrain

from that most of the time But Randy told me that we need people in our community that have no idea, that really are like, that have very what we would consider low level problems. And they're just, they're out there and they're raising happy kids. And that contributes to the health of our community as well. And it's part of the reason that people like us work at Covenant House.

Maybe we have, if we have a little bit of capacity to do this work and be involved and try and make the situation better so that those folks don't have to know that that's, she didn't call it this, but that it's part of the nobility of being involved in a situation like that.

That might not be the right word, but I appreciated that, that we can take it on as sort of a responsibility. That resonated with me. I don't know how you feel about it, Hyde, but tell me. Well, I just imagine there's also a degree of compassion fatigue, I think, for a lot of people.

And it's kind of like pick your worry. we all have worries about things in the future and and our kids or you know whatever's whatever's going on there um you've already got all this concern so sometimes it's it is a little bit easier to turn your head because you just don't have capacity for that and um if that if you haven't had an experience in your life that is really called to you to like actually do something about it you

know i i get it there's a little bit of uh ignorance is bliss there and um i don't i don't necessarily judge people for that because they don't have those experiences and um and it also doesn't mean that they're bad people. Music.

I wonder how much you think all of this, you know, the time that you spent being homeless, the work that you do at Covenant House, and everything that that involves, everything that you see on a daily basis, the good and the bad, how much do you think that has affected the way you think about and look at the world?

You know, I think when I was younger, I looked at the world as though it was an adversary, like something that would get you, something that you had to fight against something that was really out to hurt you. And it was full of bad people that would do bad things to you. And I think that's really natural for somebody that came up the way that I did.

But the older I get, the more I realized how sort of enriching these things have been to my perception and worldview of life and my own kind of cosmology within it. And I I see so much more now. And I really, that really resonates with me when I'm with friends who have children and they're like happy and really well-adjusted kids and they're funny and they're making jokes.

And I think to myself like, oh my gosh, like when's the last time I've been around like kids that were, you know, cracking jokes like this and, and experiencing, you know, they have no clue of what is waiting out there for them in cyberspace or the really real world so i am i think to myself like that that is what you're fighting for is to keep that and uh and that's not a bad thing and um i i just see i think anymore maybe you just get like older and wiser, a little more zen, I look for beauty.

And I see it all over the place. And if anything, it's just made me more grateful. Yeah, it sounds like you, well, now, you know, now that I heard your response. Aurora, it sounds like you both have gone through this evolution of, you know, at one point there was anger at the world. And then now there's appreciation for the work that you do and, you know, the wonderful, but also sometimes tragic and traumatic things that you see and experience.

That is that's a big transformation you know that could take anywhere between months and years upon years to do and i wonder this is a big question i don't expect there to be like a flawless answer but how do you or how do we like give that information to the average person and then be able to absorb it in like the correct way so that um the right decisions can be made for the community i have thoughts i'm gonna let i'm gonna let heidi take this

one you let me know if i can jump in afterward but tell me heidi oh i'm just thinking you know this is this is like asking people to have an open mind, right? And I keep thinking of the, sometimes I have this little flippant phrase that I'll say to people when they're pissing me off. And it's usually, I'll say like, well, that's like your opinion, man, right? I'll say that to people.

And it's a little bit of an F you, but seriously, you have to be willing to accept the fact that your worldview is just but one. And a lot of people have a lot of different things that have changed their worldviews. So, I mean, first off, you have to be willing to take a peek at least and understand, oh, wait a second, there's a whole other side of life that people are living that I know very little about.

And I can either choose to educate myself on that and understand that, or maybe realize you don't have the capacity for it, but you're like, I don't want to understand anymore, but I know I understand enough to know that this is a problem and, hell, I'll at least, you know, open my wallet to help. Mm-hmm. What do you think, Aurora? Not that dissimilar of an opinion, I guess. I feel like maybe in this instance, we're talking about sort of my exposure to everything that I learned working at Covey.

And maybe how that's changed my worldview and this transformation that I've gone through. Because you're right, Cody, I am not remotely the same person that I was seven years ago before I started. Um, and for me, that was something, um, that caused that transformation in me. I feel, um, pretty confident that every human being on this planet is going to encounter something along those lines at some point. It might not be, um, that they learn a lot about homelessness and human trafficking.

It might be, um, an experience that they have on their own, some, some variety, another. and they're, they're either going to have the transformation or not is what I'm trying to say that some people are going to be open to it and some people never will and there's kind of just nothing that we can do about that so, what do you think caused that transformation in you Aurora um. I don't know It's a great question. I'll have to think about it. I don't know.

You know, coming from a journalistic perspective, because that's how we met, you know, so often I think that, and maybe this applies to you, that's why I'm bringing it up and let me know if it doesn't. But so often I think I can report on this. I can do an interview on this and I can put it out to the public and it can be listened to, you know, lots of times. And that's getting the message out there. And that's how I'm participating in that conversation and helping out.

But then there's always that voice in the back of my head saying, why don't you just go to the soup kitchen? Why don't you go help? Why don't you do this? you know, and I guess maybe what my answer to myself so often is, you know, this is what I'm good at. This is so this is what I'm going to do. And I wonder if there was a moment for you where, you know, you're writing these excellent articles, you know, I'm a fan of your journalism. Thanks, man. And yeah, of course.

And, you know, you're you're thinking like, Like, why don't I just go help? You know, why don't I go boots on the ground and be a participant in making this situation better? That was, that was certainly part of it. And, um. That was the beginning of it. You're right. You nailed it. And I also came up with the rest of my answer while you were talking. Heidi and I have talked about this at length, too. She may have some things to say as well. But it didn't take very long being at Covey.

I'm learning from her what trafficking actually looks like on the ground. Um i am hearing stories of like what she and my co-workers have encountered so, um i'm learning more about sort of what to keep my eyes open for when i'm out in the community but at the same time uh like i do i write grants and other things i'm upstairs most of the time but i do at times get to go downstairs and spend time with the youth and the young women in particular remind me so much of myself and so much of so many

of my friends that are gone or dead or just got absorbed into these terrible situations and were lost. I recognize in instances that they are talking about young women sometimes, how many close calls I experienced when I was a young person. I was naive, as I said earlier, but like, I don't know, I ran with some rough crowds. My grandma used to say, there but for the grace of God, go I. And I think I have quoted that before, maybe on this podcast. I don't know.

But just, it's so, it's hard for me to believe that I got so lucky. Aurora, I think you two have, you know, you're somebody who sees this and you hate seeing the hurt and you hate seeing what's happening to these young people. But it also, you don't shy away from continuing to learn. And more than that, invest yourself into knowing who they are and their stories. And I think that that, you know, kind of like what Cody was saying, doing what you're good at, like, that's what you're good at.

You're good at holding that space and getting a real understanding, even though it hurts you, getting that real understanding of what's happening there. And we need people like you and we need people like Cody and we need, you know, angry chicks at the grocery store who might still donate to the food pantry. Who knows? Let's hope she does. I hope she does. She probably does. I don't know.

But I think that, you know, there's value in that, too, of, I think, between the two of us, knowing all the names of those young ladies that are not with us anymore, they're with us in our hearts, like, we know them, we got to know them. Mm-hmm. How often do you think of those young ladies and... I guess another question to that that I'd be interested in is the first young lady. I struggle with this. I go back and forth a lot. She wasn't the first young lady that I knew very well that I lost.

But I think of Brianna Foisy, who was killed by James Dale Ricci, the serial killer. And her body was founded at Ship Creek on the trail. And I think about her all the time because I was very close to her. And half the time, it wasn't that long ago where I struggled to even say her name. I was so angry. Like, this is a situation. I want to flip tables.

Also, i'm in aurora's house i won't flip tables but i want to i'm so pissed you know and it and it kills me and um i cycle through all sorts of crazy emotions because i loved her so much but um at the end of the day i'm like at least i had the honor to meet her um despite her being taken away from us so senselessly um i got to meet her and i hope that i made some of her days better, um and and i'm just i'm trying to feel like a laura said i'm trying to feel lucky about that.

Let me know if this is too tough but i think that it might be important for, people to hear what she was like uh anyone that knows uh brianna we call her breezy anybody that knew her um would her nickname too was like the song bird she was constantly singing and she could sing just about anything and everything and um she was this fiery little girl uh who was 20 years old when she was killed and um she was an amazing human being and would literally

give the coat off her back i don't know how many coats i got that girl and she gave them all away um she cared so much about other people and their well-being and she hated seeing injustice and people being treated unfairly and she had a tremendous amount of life and creativity and love to give to the world and um and i think the this is how you know is that everyone you talk to will describe her in that same way mm-hmm.

There's a couple of pieces that get included, should get included in most human trafficking 101 courses. Heidi has taught a number of trainings. I would not try to do them myself. I would leave them to her, but I think it's important. We should probably, in talking about human trafficking, I want to ask what it looks like, what we see at Covenant House, some of the different types. There's gang-controlled, pimp-controlled, Romeo pimps, various sorts.

Heidi, I would like for you to speak to some of the more prevalent situations that we see. I think first we should clarify the federal definition of human trafficking because it's a very misunderstood crime. The Department of Justice definition is compelling a person to provide labor or engage in commercial sex through the use of force, fraud, or coercion.

So where I think many people envision a crime that involves strangers kidnapping a teenage girl and tie her up in a trap house somewhere, there are a hundred other far more common circumstances that are just as illegal as far as the U.S. justice system is concerned. And I'm wondering, Heidi, if you could give us a little education about what people, what is more commonly going on in our community?

But well and i i also think um it's in exchange for things too right so like the component to that like it isn't just money uh sometimes it's it's illicit substances um that can be traded for another person um so i often think like the the, The drug trade in Alaska is so much more profitable, and like this is known, this is no secret, it's so much more profitable up here in Alaska than it is in the lower 48.

And the same can be said with individuals, except that, you know, you go through your meth, the meth is gone. That's not a renewable resource. But a human being, you can use them continually.

And essentially that's what we're we're seeing so you have kind of street level what you know a lot of times I would I used to think it looked like survival sex like these individuals are just engaging in this to like get by or have a place to stay but sometimes that isn't the case and what that looks like is a is sort of somebody takes control of that situation and now they're making someone go sleep with people for a place to stay or sleep with people for drugs or something like that.

So you have those kinds of situations. We see a lot of, you know, internet-based crimes where, you know, a fairly sophisticated system is set up to sell young women online and young men too i i would say that population um especially was a the queer community that that whole subset their experiences is largely different than um, did what I'm speaking to right now. And I can get into that a little bit, but, um, you do have organized behavior where, uh, you know, I, I remember listening to, um.

Uh, a victim that had experienced trafficking at a hotel in town. Um, that is now, um, that's now been like taken down, but her experience in that hotel was.

Uh, uh, men, uh, you know, who were working seasonal type work or slope work or something like that would come and check into those hotel and they would send up the front desk guy and he would ask the man what he wanted and uh and he's not like talking about room service he's talking about drugs and girls and then the man would like essentially like place an order and a girl you know and often underage girls would be delivered to his door um and you know they're

they're not there willingly um so you have sophisticated systems set up like that too so um anymore a lot of it is internet-based where you've got people selling people online but then you have like internet predators that are using um sexploitation and videos and things like that to um ensnare people into trafficking under threat of um you know or again that coercion of having you know their pictures that this we see this a lot with young people in school

um this wasn't like a street level like you met this person at a mall this was all online um but we do have the situations where they meet them at a mall too So this isn't some creeper in a trench coat. This is like a good looking guy who's going up to a group of girls and he starts like grooming them and charming them. And, and, you know, then pretty soon they're like in his apartment and he's not letting them out. So there's a lot of different levels to that.

How often do you encounter new ways of sexploitation? Or do you feel like we have a pretty good grasp on the different systems? Oh, I think we're probably always behind, right? Like, this is somebody's full-time job. This is all they're doing is cranking out ways to predicate against others and be that monster. So they're working on this all the time. I mean, if you talk to law enforcement, you can't keep up with the apps.

So anytime a new app, you know, whatever it is, that's another avenue to get young people. So as much as I would like to think that we're continuing to develop protective capacities for young people, the predators are working against us. And a lot of times it does feel like they're always a step ahead. So how do we talk to young people about being cautious of these things?

Because it does seem like at a certain point, um, some people could be overcautious, you know, never talk to anybody, you know, and then how are you going to make friends? But at a certain point, you know, there's that intuitiveness that's involved in it. Like, okay, I probably shouldn't be, I'm going to throw some numbers out here. I shouldn't be 13 and hanging out with a random, you know, 38-year-old guy from the mall and going home with him.

Right. For sure. God. If the gateway to trafficking is vulnerability, you have to decrease those vulnerabilities. So, you know, I didn't experience trafficking when I was a kid.

Um i think largely because i knew about it i knew what could happen like we were all really well aware and um and willing to like throw down against somebody who like tried to mess with you so um you know i'm not saying you have to grow up like that but we had an awareness of what was happening and it was very real this wasn't a boogeyman this wasn't this isn't the slender man Right. This is real things.

So we, you know, we all had that understanding. But I think confidence plays a role in that, too. If you've ever done online dating, I I sort of love this as like a social exercise to like there's nothing better that you can do for yourself to really figure out what your boundaries are, because you are going to meet some freaks. And they are going to push that, right?

So I think helping young people understand what their boundaries are, be comfortable saying no. I think there's a lot of socialization done around females in particular that have to do with always being polite and agreeable and some of those things. And that shit has got to stop. We need young women that are willing to turn around and tell somebody to F off.

That needs to be more common and that that needs to be taught like politeness is great but save it for that space and if you need to be rude and ugly you know do it if it keeps you safe but a lot of a lot of what we do sometimes as parents or teachers or whatever we start grooming children and we start preparing them and creating those vulnerabilities in them when they're very little.

If you've ever been to somebody's house who has a toddler and they push the toddler at you and they're like, go give, you know, uncle whatever a hug and the kid doesn't want to because they're shy, but they make them. You're telling that kid like you don't have autonomy over your body. Go hug strangers, even if it is uncle, right? They're saying, you know, who cares that you're uncomfortable and shy? You hug this person anyway.

So there's all sorts of little things, you know, that we teach children very early on where, you know, you have got this idea of like stranger danger, but it isn't the obvious person that is likely to be, you know, someone that's going to victimize you how often do you still think of your younger self and what she went through. You know, I was just talking to my brother about this last night. I think about her a lot because she was such a rowdy little chick and did all this crazy stuff.

And um and i was saying this to my brother and and uh he said well you know it's funny now but that was very scary then um and i think that my my sort of view on it is like yeah but i'm i'm battle tested i i don't have a lot of fear and that really derives from like knowing how capable I am because of those things that I've been through. And you don't have to do it with a jaded, heavy heart. You can still be a jovial person and not look at the world and be hypervigilant

around every court. I've worked through all that. So in essence, I wouldn't changed a thing. I think it has helped me help other young people. I read that during that time, you'd have these moments when you believed that you wouldn't live much longer. What did you think was going to happen? Oh, I absolutely believed that I would be killed on the street somehow.

I either thought, you know, my mom's, even after my mom's ex-boyfriend had gone to jail, he actually brutalized, he brutalized a sex worker and went to jail for 12 years. So at one point we had some reprieve from him and we were able to get away. But there was a long time where I thought he was going to kill us and that was how I was going to die. Or I'd be on the street and I was going to be killed. And it felt like an inevitability, like it was going to happen.

And I lived a long time thinking that that was kind of what was going to occur. And by the time I was 17 and I'm working, I've got my own place and the fun of having a car payment and all that stuff. I'm sort of living my life.

But I think it was like on my birthday and I had this realization like, oh my God, I'm going to live. I'm going to live? I should probably start hearing about college or something. It was almost like, oh no, I have to think about a future now because Because I'm done with this whole sort of survival stuff that's going on. Now I've really got a plan for the future. And I haven't thought about it. And so that was like scary. And it was a weird realization.

And I was sitting on a swing and I was just like crying. And I remember my friends being like, what is wrong with you? It's your birthday. And I'm just like, oh, man, I've got to start bringing my grades up, I guess. What do you think was the difference between you at that age and some of these other young women who didn't make it? I have had this question for you for years, Heidi. Can you bottle it? Can we sell it to people that need it?

Because you have a toughness that I find singularly uncommon.

Uh you know i i think about this all the time um too because there's myself and a few others that sort of escaped that trailer park that lifestyle that uh made it out okay and and i'll say well how come us and and not the others like all those other girls we know are gone like you know why and um honestly i i think a lot of it has to do with privilege um and while we were um like poor and all these other things we we still are american we're white or white passing we had

every privilege afforded to us um to be able to get ahead and um i think that that plays a big role too is I didn't we didn't have all these traumas happen to us and racism we had all these traumas that happened to us um you know and and there were some things that we could do around that and we could we could get our way out I think the other thing too is um we had the intellectual um and cognitive functioning to be able to do so yeah and and that way that's kind of a privilege too.

We were a little bit smarter than the average bear. I mean, maybe. I'm not sure. I've never been tested. But maybe we were just a little bit smarter. And that way, we were able to get ourselves out of a lot of jams. And I think that that plays a role. And I mean, I feel very fortunate for it.

But you know it wasn't uh i also i watched a lot of tv so i loved movies i loved action movies and there i had some of my role models aren't people that like exist right it's a lot of fiction sigourney weaver aliens right uh got it done and i remember thinking as a kid like yeah that's that's the stuff right there so um i didn't have a lot of role models growing up but i did have some of those things and uh and they showed you that life could be different and

that a lot of people have hard things happen yeah um but you're gonna have to deal with it i don't have a pulse rifle but you know maybe in the future yeah well heidi those are all the questions we have for you i want to thank you for your time your story and the important work you do well thank you for having me. You're the best, Hyde. For more information about the Anchorage Museum, visit anchoragemuseum.org This podcast was produced by me, Cody Liska, for the Anchorage Museum.

With additional help from Julie Decker. Chattermark's music is produced by Keys Open Doors. Music. Thank you.