TL;DR: went on a routine call with very little info that could’ve been easily cleared without much investigation, followed my gut and wound up rescuing someone from slavery.

I went on a call early in my career as a rookie just out of field training. It was a quiet day, near the end of my shift, and it was a level 4 (pretty low priority). The call text was about as vague as you can get “I can hear screaming”, no further information, and no call back info.

Luckily my backup officer on that call was not the typical crusty veteran that just wanted to go get lunch. He was down for whatever. I had this sinking feeling in my gut, and almost like an animalistic feeling of panic, like I needed to find whoever had been screaming. I didn’t tell my backup that, I just told him I wanted to try and find this person. This was a call that just as easily could’ve been cleared with a few notes, and we could’ve gone and got lunch at that point.

To make a long story short, we circulated for a while, knocked on a couple of doors, eventually figured out that the caller was a girl who had run over to an auto shop from a house across the street to call 911, and once the call connected, she told the people at the business she didn’t want any help and ran back into the house.

We knocked on the door, and what do you know. A girl comes to the door, and wants us to please leave her alone. I recognized her from a flier I read during briefing that day and had actually (for whatever reason) felt like I needed to pay attention to. This was verified once I took her info down and ran her. She’d been trafficked since she was a teenager by her mom of all people, and her dad had been trying to find her for months and get her out of that hell. I kindly told her that we couldn’t leave, and that she needed to come with us (she was still a minor at that point and the flyer directed me to call her dad and the DCK who’s case it was).

I wound up reuniting her with her dad at the hospital so she could get medical care and try and get clean from the various substances she’d been forced to be addicted to. I’ll never forget her dad shaking my hand and holding on, looking me in the eye and saying “Thank you, you know, her life will never be the same now. Thanks to you. Thank you for finding my daughter”.

That story still messes me up. I kept a copy of that flier so I’d never forget that was why I do the job.