One passenger was a well dressed, older man. The other was a young girl who looked "like she had been through pure hell."
That was enough to set off alarm bells in Shelia Frederick's head. She was an airline stewardess with a decade's worth of experience working for Alaska airlines. When she got a strange feeling from the passengers, she tried to start a conversation with them, but the man wouldn't say much.
Still convinced something was wrong, Frederick came up with a plan that ended up saving the young girl's life.
Frederick managed to whisper to the girl to go to the bathroom, where she left a note on the mirror with her phone number, asking the girl if she was okay.
When Frederick checked the bathroom later, she found the girl had written her own message on the note. "I need help."
After that Frederick alerted the pilots. When the plane landed in San Francisco, police were waiting to arrest the male passenger. It turned out Frederick had foiled a human trafficker, who was planning to exploit the young girl he was traveling with.
Years later, Frederick and the woman she saved still keep in touch. Apparently, she memorized the number on the note, because a few weeks after the incident she gave Frederick a call. She's in college now, an opportunity she might not have had if one clever flight attendant hadn't followed her instincts.
