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- [00:01]
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- [01:04]
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- [01:13]
Alice
I'm alice. And I'm brett and this is the prosecutor's legal bl. Welcome back to the Prosecutor's Legal Briefs. I'm your host Alice and I'm joined as always by my life filled co host, Brett.
- [01:50]
Brett
I do have a full life, alice. I agree. 100. That's a perfect descriptor for me. And I know you're always talking about me and that's why I love this show because I get to hear your real true thoughts about me.
- [02:01]
Alice
Yeah, this has nothing to do with you Brett, at all because. But I'm really glad that you think it does. You guys. You know, there's so many things in this world that is divisive, that's depressing, that gets you in a funk. But today we're going to talk about something that is very near to both my heart and Brett's heart. And we are talking to people who are on the front lines trying to do something to end human trafficking. This is a huge, huge problem. Much bigger than I think many of us even want to face. But we have here today Brad Ortenzi and Nate Aiken to tell us about the good work by Zoe International. Brad and Nate, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.
- [02:41]
Brad Ortenzi
Hey, thanks for having us.
- [02:43]
Nate Aiken
It's great to be along.
- [02:44]
Alice
So the reason it almost needs no introduction, but if you guys go to gozoe.org you can see some pretty powerful stats I'm just going to read to you some quick stats that you can find right on their website that's going to stop you in your tracks, no matter how much you know about child trafficking or not. So 50 million people are human trafficked worldwide today. 30% of human trafficking victims are children. That's one in three. And this isn't just because there are bad people in the world. It's because, like so many things in our world, it's driven by money. This is a $347 billion industry. And you may think, well, that's a Goliath. There is no one who can stop it. While we have Brad and Nate here who said no, every single person can make a difference, and they are doing all they can to fight those seemingly impossible stats. So, Brad, can you tell us a little bit about Zoe and also how you got involved in this field?
- [03:44]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah. First off, thanks for having us. This is a privilege and a pleasure. So thanks for your time. Yeah. So, Zoe, we've been around for about 23 years. We exist to do whatever we can for destroying child trafficking. So we're a global organization, a nonprofit. We're in Thailand, Japan, Mexico, Australia, and then here in the US we are in Los Angeles and southeast Pennsylvania. Each location is a little different, depending on what we do. But in essence, we work in three pillars. Prevention, rescue, and restoration. The way I got started with this is I was a detective in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, nearing the end of my career. And at that time, I was working a lot of child sex crimes. And then I got involved in a task force called icac, Internet Crimes Against Children, which is a federal task force where we're licensed and trained to combat the problem through tech. That's when my heart really started breaking for kids. I would go online and talk to the predators. Sometimes parents would sign their child's account over to me if they were being groomed. So I really got to know the mind of the predator here. And seeing how these guys operate, I wanted to work on that stuff all the time. And at the same time, I was looking for a retirement job. Heard about Zoe, heard they kind of did the same thing. And so that's kind of how we made the jump into. I retired and made the jump to Zoe and did this. My wife and I, we lived in Thailand for five years, working specifically there, working with the world Thai police and doing work over there. And then coming back, we expanded Zoe to the east coast and started our east coast operations here.
- [05:21]
Brett
You know, one thing you mentioned that I think is always Important. I think a lot of people believe, or they want to believe that this is a big city problem. But you mentioned you were a detective in Lancaster county in Pennsylvania. Where are you guys located? Just want to go ahead and get that out there. Let it. These are friends from lit town, Greatest town in America. But even it has this problem, right? I mean, even there you have these predators. Do you want to mention Nate? Nate, what do you do for a living?
- [05:52]
Nate Aiken
6th grade teacher at Lidditz Elementary.
- [05:55]
Brett
Yes. Nate is one of the heroes who gets us into Litz every year. And it's one of his classes, one of the three sixth grade classes that we get to visit with. And Nate and I, we were at the, you know, I was doing my tour of Liditz. I was all over Lit. It's in this winter wonderland. We're at the distillery because of course, they have a distillery. It was wonderful. And Nate joins us and we get to talking about this. This sort of completely unrelated thing. And Zoe, and in particular, you know, we're talking about ways to address this and ways to raise awareness. In particular, something called a race across America. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is?
- [06:39]
Nate Aiken
Yeah. So kind of like we were talking about. Brett, Race across America is a crazy feat. It is literally the coast of California all the way to the Atlantic coast. Been a different couple of places. Annapolis, Maryland, and more recently, Atlantic City. And it's nonstop. So it's every hour, every minute, somebody's cycling on your team. So traditionally, since 2019, Zoe's put together an eight man team that competes every other year. And we've been fortunate to place and win it in totality. Overall. We came in first overall one time, which is wild, but essentially finding eight dudes that are willing to fundraise, spread awareness, and dedicate to the cause. And when you have something like Zoe International that's fighting against child trafficking, as a teacher, as a father of three, I mean, that's something near and dear to my wife and I's heart and something easy to get behind. And Brad being a mentor, he pulled me onto the bike and it came together.
- [07:31]
Alice
Okay, so that sounds insane. Like physically, like an impossible feat that I could not even begin to think about doing. So how long does it take to bike with eight people? Because I. We're about to talk about something even more insane, but with eight people. About how long does it take to bike across America?
- [07:47]
Nate Aiken
Our goal was always to beat six days, and I think we've come within a couple hours a couple of times. But we've hit headwinds and storms and sometimes trains even slow you down. But we had some wild experiences this year. Brad was alluding to the fact that one of our vans hit an elk. You don't expect that. And thankfully, it wasn't a rider.
- [08:06]
Alice
Oh, my goodness.
- [08:08]
Brett
Six days. I don't think I knew that you did this.
- [08:11]
Alice
How long are the stretches? Do you sleep? Do you eat?
- [08:15]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah. So we came up with the plan of you take the eight riders, divide them up into two four man teams, each team has their own crew and to go as fast as we can. Again, because it's a race. Those four riders, they're on the bike for 15 minutes, sprinting as fast as they can. And then the crew goes up and the next rider, and that keeps. They keep leapfrogging like that for 12 hours. So each team has a 12 hour shift. We average about 20, 21 miles an hour for the whole 3,000 miles. So eight man teams are moving. So then that whole team and their crew, they're on the road for 12 hours. And then we switch out the teams that, those two teams, we switch them out every 12 hours. So that's how that looks like.
- [08:55]
Alice
We're both a little speechless. We're typically not accused for being speechless, but that's an incredible feat on so many levels because obviously you're not doing this just for fun. I, I hope it's a little bit fun in that six days and you get to recover and eat all the, I don't know, pasta that you want afterwards. But you do this with a fundraising goal in mind. Tell us a little bit about the fundraising goal and how this ties into, you know, what Zoe does.
- [09:20]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah. So, you know, the way this whole thing started in cycling. My wife and I were avid cyclists, so the very first time we did something like this, it wasn't to Race Across America, but we rode our bikes from Virginia to California and we were creating awareness and raising funds. And we just so happened by happenstance to be on the same route as the Race Across America that was coming the opposite direction. And that gave us an idea like, what is the Race Across America? And we started looking into this. We found that the Race Across America is a platform for just about every team and cyclist that enter into the Race Across America, raise funds and awareness for their platform and their charity of choice. So it was already a system set up perfectly for what we do. So the next year, we entered an eight man team into the Race Across America. So the first year, I think we raised about $180,000. And it continued to grow every year. We've done it now. We've completed it four times now. This last year, we raised $684,000 for Zoe.
- [10:17]
Alice
So number one, already I can see our listeners who are in the chat already saying, where do I give money? How do I do this? We'll get there, guys. Don't worry. I hope, okay, we're going to get you guys over 700,000. That's our goal with, with the listeners and everything. That is an incredible amount of money. And Nate, you have a full time job, a very full job on top of that. So are these individual donors who are just donating for the cause, Are they big companies? You know, how do you get to a number like 700,000?
- [10:46]
Nate Aiken
That's a great question. It varies per rider. And everyone that's on the crew crew needs to get a ton of credit because without them, the whole thing falls apart quickly. But they're part of the fundraising as well. Brad challenges us as riders to raise $20,000. Some of the riders are in the business world as business consultants or bank presidents. And so they have a lot of networking within corporations that they can get a lot of money raised for Zoe, as a teacher, a lot of mine are just relational, through the church, through the community, through family and friends. And so it's a lot of not nickel and diamond, but personal family donations. And they do add up. So we've been fortunate to be widely supported by the network we've been blessed with.
- [11:28]
Brett
So I do want to. To talk about what you're doing this year, because it's even crazier than what you did last year. We'll get to that in a second. But I know everybody, money's tight. People want to give money to charities that use their funds well and use them efficiently. Can you talk a little bit about where these donations end up going and how that money helps to both help children who are in this and also to end child trafficking?
- [11:55]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah, great question. So again, we are a privately funded nonprofit. We get a grant occasionally. But basically, I would say almost all the funds that come in are. We're just privately funded through corporate sponsors, through donors. But what we do is, again, so the money raised for the Race Across America goes into our general fund. So it's not for one specific location. It's a general fund donation. And that goes to, again, it gets divvied up through all our six locations. So, yeah, how it helps. So again, those three buckets that I talked about, the prevention, the rescue and restoration so restoration. We have two homes for children, one in Thailand and one in Los Angeles. These are homes specifically for children that have been pulled from trafficking. And again, we don't cowboy up ever. We're always working with local government, local social services, and partnering with them and kind of connecting the gaps and filling the gaps that are so often found within government structure. So it goes to the homes, these two places. We are forever doing advocacy. So at a few of our locations, our Zoe advocates were on the stings with police in hotels, and we're meeting the women that are coming right off and interacting with law enforcement. We spend a ton of time. Again, one thing we would love to do is put the cuffs on the bad guys, get the bad guys, get the traffickers in jail. It's really hard to do. And once someone gets sucked into trafficking, it's really hard to get them out. So we spend a lot of time in prevention. We're a team here on the East Coast. We're a team of six of us. But last year we did 60 presentations and human trafficking 101. So we were always doing presentations, always doing training on anyone where from parents, grandparents, to law enforcement to all those agencies, letting them know what human trafficking looks like in this area. But one of the things we do, and it's really working out well within that prevention thing is as a task force, as an organization, if you're standing at a river and human trafficking is the river, and every time someone's sucked into there, you go and you pull them out, that's great. But wisdom would tell us, okay, let's go upstream and figure out how are people getting in there in the first place. And that's really a lot of our prevention stuff. So what we do is we find the most highly vulnerable kids in the areas that we work, and we get ahead of that system there. So we have advocacy and mentorship for those children to insulate their lives, to prevent them from being trafficked in the first place. We spend a ton of time doing that in a lot of our locations as well. So, like I said, the six locations they operate, they're all in five different countries. So there's a lot of different work that's being done there. But we're always in that prevention, rescue, or restoration phase within those three pillars,
- [14:36]
Alice
kind of putting a little bit more specificity on this. I know the range can be enormous, but for Zoe, what is kind of the spectrum of ages that you're seeing kids enter, as you say, this river of trafficking?
- [14:52]
Brad Ortenzi
Generally, I think it's this is a national statistic. The age generally for under 18 is about 14 or 15. That generally is being interacted with by law enforcement, social services. That's 14 or 15.
- [15:04]
Alice
Which means that it probably precedes that, right?
- [15:07]
Brad Ortenzi
Certainly, yeah, certainly does precede that.
- [15:09]
Alice
And when you say that, you know, the prevention focuses on how to keep them from entering that, what are some of the. I think there's a lot of misperceptions of how this happens. You know, there certainly is the situation, of course, where someone is snatched off the street, thrown into a van and that can happen. Right. But obviously when there's prevention methods, that means that you guys have studied and you know, what are the risk factors, red flags for kids who can find themselves in the vulnerable populations that end up in that river of trafficking. Can you kind of let us know what you've been seeing?
- [15:42]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah, so great question. So again, if we look at, let's look at this from the eyes of the predator of the trafficker and who he wants to. He doesn't just look at a child and say, I'm going to traffic that child. And now with the Internet, we've given them the perfect playground for him to operate in. So what he needs is vulnerability. He needs systemic individual. And all these vulnerabilities, if we think of it this way, and we say this often, that an empowered child is very difficult to traffic. So what makes that child empowered? That's education, that's community, that's family. So he's looking at whoever is out there that doesn't have those things. And if they have some of those, he's going to create a wedge to isolate that child. So, you know, the risk factors are general. You know, people always ask, what can we do to stop human trafficking? And we always say, look for the vulnerable in your community. Look for the vulnerable within your sphere. So some of those risk factors are any of those vulnerabilities that make them. Who do they come to if something happens? If they have no one in their life? You know, there's other risk factors that you can watch for. If a child all of a sudden their situation changes drastically, that could be mood swings, that could be kind of a different personality, that could be coming from menial socioeconomic status. And all of a sudden they have a higher socioeconomic status, different clothes, different gifts, things like that. You know, one of the most blaring, it's not always human trafficking, but one red flag that always pops up is you have a 14, 15 year old girl that all of a sudden has a 25, 27 year old boyfriend, big red flag. We want to look at that very closely. But, but generally speaking, we always look at from the eyes of the predator of who is vulnerable and what are those vulnerabilities and that's who he's going to go after.
- [17:23]
Brett
So obviously you, you guys have a worldwide reach. I mean, you have chapters in places around the world. How much of trafficking is international versus more community based? You know, I think in people's minds, kids are being thrown onto a boat and taken to Thailand, for instance, and being trafficked. But what is the reality of the way trafficking works?
- [17:50]
Brad Ortenzi
Very little crossing borders. Does it happen? Absolutely. But in the scope of things, if you look at everything as a percentage, very, very little, basically trafficking is going to happen in the location that the children are already in. They can be moved around a little bit. And that's a little bit of a misnomer itself. People think human trafficking, there has to be movement in order for it to happen. That's not the case. And I would think another misconception is that children are locked in a room and they don't see the light of day. You know, many kids that we work with, they're being actively trafficked and they're going to school every day. It happens that way. So certainly urban trafficking looks a little different than suburban a little bit. But generally all the same system is in place there.
- [18:33]
Alice
And you mentioned having of course, a home in Los Angeles, which is domestic to us in the United States. I think also a lot of people assume this is happening in countries that are not the United States. So in Los Angeles, what does child trafficking look like in the United States and does it happen here?
- [18:51]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah. So Los Angeles. I get the privilege to work in Los Angeles and travel to Los Angeles on a few times a year. So if you picture this from I worked it in Southeast Asia and saw some pretty tough stuff. When I went to Los Angeles and started looking at what it looked like there, it was almost like the wild West. Los Angeles was very eye opening in a lot of ways. You know, people can do their own research. If you look up Figueroa street, There's videos on YouTube of just the blade. They call it the blade and there's literally hundreds of women and even driving by and looking at that, you don't have to be any type of a specialist to see she's 14, 15, she's 13, 12. I mean, it just. And it's on the street. Basically. Law enforcement has their hands tied with a lot of work there. So you Know what it looks like it's again, generally speaking it's going to be a interaction and a lot of this now happens online. But interaction and what we call generally speaking what we're seeing most is what we call the Romeo pimp. Where basically a relationship is going to start with that. And human trafficking is really hard to describe because when someone gets sucked into something that that's so bad, people always say, well, if you're not locked in a room, why don't you just leave? There's this thing called the trauma bond that is extremely psychological and it's one of the most nastiest things I've ever seen. And this is coming from law enforcement detective over 20 years just kind of seeing how he will manipulate that whole situation and where she feels like she owes him something and he'll have a relationship with her where again he has filled every need that she had. And we say she generally it's largely women, but it can be males as well. And she feels stuck in there because he's filling every need that she has. So she kind of feels stuck in that relationship. She may not like it, but many times it's going to be better than at least she has someone that every time she pick ups a phone, he's always there for her. That's something she usually hasn't happened has in the past. And that through that relationship, through a whole series of grooming and exploitation system that he's created, it kind of really cements that relationship.
- [21:02]
Brett
So Nate, you're a sixth grade teacher and unfortunately the age ranges we're talking about start about sixth grade. And that's where I think these kids probably begin to be targeted. I would ask you sort of two questions. I mean, you're on the front lines of this in many ways. I mean you may see things that a lot of these kids may not have people at home who are paying a lot of attention to them. For instance, do you think the education system schools are doing a good job of training teachers on what to look for? And do you have any advice for educators who might be listening out there about how they can be on the front lines of this fight?
- [21:38]
Nate Aiken
Yeah, it's a tremendous question. It makes me think about when we first started fundraising. A lot of the local businesses were a little tentative to jump on board because they wanted something tangible that was going to impact our immediate community. And as awareness has increased and Zoe and Brad have done a phenomenal job of doing that, we realize, oh my gosh, it's happening right here. And as People have become aware of that, then, okay, what are the signs we're looking for? What are the vulnerabilities we're looking for? And yeah, we want to support that as far as education is concerned. And you're right. It honestly breaks my heart. A couple years ago, the media team came in from California to film in our classroom for the documentary we made for Race Across America for Zoe. And you're just looking at these kids that are in the video and you're like, oh my gosh. Like you're thinking about this kid that comes from a broken home and the vulnerable there, and God just breaks your heart for them. So you're constantly praying for them. But from a secular perspective, I don't think it's something that's even considered or addressed. Obviously, we have people in employment in our districts, our public school districts, that look out for the homeless and those that don't have a permanent home life or structure or support system around them and provide the best they can. But I don't think in general, educators are aware of everything that Brad was just speaking to. That's definitely something we could look to improve.
- [23:02]
Brad Ortenzi
And if I could jump in here. So we're invited anywhere to give our presentation. We're invited everywhere to give Our Human Trafficking 101, except the schools. So. And I sort of get it. We've done a number of them to the faculty and in service day and trainings like. So we've been invited to a few schools. There's. But it really needs to get to the kids. And I get it. It's a hard sell to get all the permission to talk about some of this nasty stuff that involves sexual activity to kids. That's a very fine line there. But also just was involved just this week in a roundtable with one of the local senators that was looking at the problems of can they bring some legislation to fix this problem? And that was one of the things we brought up, like this information needs to get to the schools, into the kids. And it's just really, it's a hard sell. And it rarely happens to get into the schools where the kids are.
- [23:52]
Alice
So when you say it's hard to get into the schools, is it also hard to get schools to have you present to their teachers, as Nate notes, that there's kind of this hole in education. Brett and I prosecute these kinds of cases. But much of what you're saying, Brad, some of it's still shocking to me and still new to me. So I can only imagine the regular teacher who may not have gotten to know Zoe or any of these types of issues.
- [24:16]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah, it's. Our information went out to every school. And I think last year we might have done two, we may have conducted two or three. And we operate in two counties. So there's a lot of schools there. So we, we rarely get invited.
- [24:28]
Brett
Let me ask you this. If there are teachers out there who are listening, who are interested in learning more, if they go to gozoe.org are there resources there?
- [24:38]
Brad Ortenzi
Absolutely. There's. There's resources there. They can contact us. We can come do presentations, or we can do ad hoc presentations for teachers that would be interested. So, yeah, absolutely.
- [24:47]
Alice
And then there's. There's another avenue. Right. So some of us aren't teachers, but many of us have children. I have four kids. Brett has three kids. And we, not just our kids, but we are constantly interacting. We were just talking about how we were all at soccer tonight, quite literally, hundreds of kids running around. Right. And we're all interacting with them daily. I mean, is there something that parents can do first in recognizing these red flags, these vulnerabilities in our own community when we're picking up our kids, dropping off our kids, having play dates that we can educate ourselves? That's the first part of my question. The second part is going to be, then, can we become the advocates for our children's schools to have education?
- [25:30]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah, 100%. And that's what we would love to see is just people that are banging on the doors of schools to say, hey, we need some type of education. And again, human trafficking is a really hard, challenging. Not everybody wants to talk about it, but one thing, and we kind of got a little crafty in this, so we also do protecting kids online. A lot of that stuff. We've taken, you know, my background, my passion of keeping kids safe online, especially from being an ICAC officer for a number of years, but then also all the kids that we deal with, and we've taken all the research from them and compiled it into, okay, how did they get here in the first place? What were the tech, you know, when they were. How were they trafficked and what did that look like? And it all comes back to some type of social media or some type of connection there. So we teach a protecting kids online process. So with that, that's a little bit easier to talk about protecting your kids online more than, you know, human trafficking. So we've used that platform a lot as far as, hey, we have this protecting kids online. So, you know, to your first question, it all Starts in the home. Everyone has to have conversations with their kids about what they're doing online and when weird or bad things start happening. And it's not that used to be if, but now it's when. Because there's hardly a kid that's out there that hasn't been approached by someone they don't know, that hasn't been approached by probably some type of predator or some type of something with some type of exploitation from them. Have conversations with your kids. That's just the number one. And not only have conversations with your kids, creating that safe space for them, that when something weird does happen, they feel safe enough to come to you and say, hey, this happened. There's hardly a case that I can think that we've ever worked that they had that great relationship of someone they could go to when that grooming started happening. Because that grooming doesn't happen overnight. It sometimes is over a long period of time. And that child had no one to go to in that period. And that they felt safe to say, hey, something's happening here. This might be a little weird. So it really starts in the home. And you know, another thing that we say is not only your child, but the children that your child is hanging out with because they're going to hang out with. And those kind of habits kind of morph into each other and they don't go more strict, they always go less strict. So you start hanging out with kids that aren't strict and guess what, your kid now, boom, they start kind of morphing into those habits as well. So good conversations to have with other parents. And there's almost rarely do we see now that in the way to get sucked into human trafficking, it doesn't have a social media or some type of Internet based connection with that. So keeping kids safe. There is a great way for any parent and community to start about keeping kids safe from human trafficking.
- [28:08]
Brett
So this is obviously a very serious conversation, but I do want to transition to something a little bit more fun and also a way that people can help. We've been talking about Race Across America. We talked about last year, which Nate was involved in. How did y' all do last year? Did you come in strong or kind of tell off how to.
- [28:26]
Nate Aiken
Yeah, we did. All right. I think we came in first overall for the eight man team.
- [28:31]
Alice
That's pretty humble right there. My question would have been, did you make it, not win it?
- [28:38]
Brett
So there you go. You can also support a winner. But this year, and I want to give the. We've mentioned a couple times. GoZoe.org is the overarching website if you want to support the Race Across America team. And we'll put this on all our various social media. Gozoe.org backslash R AAM-2026 and you'll see that link as well on the website. But I've been talking about an eight man team, which is crazy. I can't imagine how insane you have to be to join eight people trying to race across America. So what are you doing this year?
- [29:14]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah, so I don't recommend making decisions during Race Across America. And what happened last year was myself as the team manager and the main mechanic during Race Across America. I think it was in Colorado and we had only a few hours sleep in the last couple of days. We started talking about moving forward, what happens next. And Randy Martin, he's the guy I'm talking about, we started talking about doing a two man Ram next year. And that again, that led into this year. We've entered into the race as a two man team. So Randy and myself, we're going to take it on two year. We have, we have, the team is assembled. I think we have, we have a crew of about 11, 11 crew members. So June 20th we're going to start and attempt the two man team.
- [29:55]
Alice
So you know what's less crazy than a two man team racing across America, raising $700,000. Guys like that is so much easier to do than to do what Brad just said. Because if I tried to do a two man race across America, you would never hear from me again. And I wouldn't have even made it past the first mile.
- [30:17]
Nate Aiken
Just to put this in perspective because I think the first year we competed, the world record holder for Ram and I actually think he has the world record for most miles in 24 hours in Europe. He was there at the reception a couple days after the race finished in Annapolis and we were hearing his stories. This guy, his best friend was his crew leader. And at one point he's cycling and his captain, his crew chief, remember, pulls up next to him like hey man, like what's going on? Are you okay? You're going really slow. And he's an amazing bike rider. And he realizes like the rider starts pulling away from him and veering away and freaking out. He doesn't know who he is, where he is, who his best friend is. He's just completely gone. And so they had to pull over. Emergency, like get him some rest and all that. And then even the two. So that was a soloist which they're crazy. But the two man team is crazy as well. We watched the documentary Godspeed. It's an amazing documentary about two guys that go across similar to Brad and Randy and they have hallucinations. They're going down the Rockies descending and they black out and they picture themselves going in through a cow pasture and the gates opening. One time they hit a pothole and the arrow bar snapped down on them going full speed and had to muscle it up and not die. I mean, it's scary stuff. So keep these guys in your prayers. They're pretty nuts.
- [31:31]
Alice
We will certainly be praying for you guys. Brad, I mean, this is truly incredible. I am so honored that you would take time away from sleep because I would be sleeping for the next like six months until the race happened. So I can't believe you're awake talking to us, sharing this knowledge. I hope all of you listening, pray for them because that sounds terrifying. A true feat to even accomplish. But then to also, if you have the ability to donate money, donate money go Zoe.org R AAM 2026 but you're doing this, all the hallucinations, all the, you know, crazy things because you care so deeply about this organization and about ending child trafficking. It says on your website that you guys are not going to stop until every person who's being trafficked, it ends. And again, it seems impossible, but it's not. And I want to shift slightly because we may have people who are listening who know someone who's been a victim, who may still be a victim. And Nate, I think you said it earlier, your heart breaks. And the reason your heart breaks is because every single human being has dignity. And it doesn't matter what you've been through, what you've done, how dark you think your future looks. Every single human being has dignity. And I think one thing that we've seen in our line of work is these traffickers. Their power is convincing their victims that they have nothing but this trafficked life, that they are worthy of nothing, that there is no sunlight in the future, that no one's ever going to want them, that they are dirty and they are not even human. And I know that one of your features is restoration. And I just want to give you a platform to talk about that. That if you're listening, if you've ever been a victim, if you know anyone who's been a victim, that is false. You are an incredible human being. There is no one who's ever been created like you. And there will never be anyone like you in the world. And the world is a better place because of you. No matter what you're in right now, no matter what you think your future holds, there is beauty and light. So can you talk about the restoration prong?
- [33:35]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah. You know, and it's, it's really why I do this work again. So it gets me a little choked up just thinking about some of the cases specifically. You know, for me, it goes back to Thailand and working over there, just some, just beautiful situations where we were involved in investigations from the beginning. And then the great part about Zoe is the girls that were rescued, they really didn't know we had a rescue team there, but really didn't interact much with them because it's a separate part of the campus. But we knew of them and get to watch them flourish. And, you know, it was just, just a beautiful thing where kids taken from the situation and just loved unconditionally and what that does to them. I'll probably stop here because I'll get too emotional just, just thinking about that. But it is some of the most amazing things I've ever seen. And it's why we do what we do, and it's why we do ram. Quite honestly, you know, I wish that I could share those experiences with everybody, and RAM gives us a platform to do that. But also there's this kind of weird thing about the more crazy thing you do, the more people might listen. So I don't know how that works. I don't know the formula with that. It just kind of works. So that's why we chose something, a long endurance event just to kind of snag people's attention of like, why are you doing this? Well, this is why we're doing this. So. But yeah, the restoration part, it's. It's absolutely why I get out of bed in the morning. And everybody is always kind of the same way. We just have this passion. No matter what we do, whether we're working with law enforcement, whether we're social workers or whatever job we have at Zoe to get them to that restorative part. That's why we do what we do.
- [35:06]
Brett
And along the lines of the crazy thing, I just want to reiterate, you and one other guy are going to ride a bike, a bicycle across the United States. That's going to happen.
- [35:18]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah, it is crazy. We're going to do one, two or four hour ships. We think we're going to finish in eight days. We'd like to finish in eight days. And we'll. Each of us, we'll be going almost 400 miles a day. So pretty much 200 miles a day for each of us.
- [35:31]
Alice
So what day does this start?
- [35:33]
Brad Ortenzi
June 20th. Yeah, yeah, we got that desert. And that's the beauty of ram. You'll have so many different climates that you go through and. Yeah, June 20th and the first three days, it's. It's hot. We go through the desert. I remember one morning we got out of the bus, our shift was starting at 1 o' clock in the morning and it was 105 and that was one of the cooler days. That was one of the cooler rams, actually. 105 at 1 o' clock in the morning.
- [35:58]
Alice
In your 11 person crew, do you have a couple doctors at least in there?
- [36:03]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah, no, actually we don't, but just mechanics. We might want to rethink it for this year.
- [36:10]
Brett
We only care about the bikes. The people are expendable. Yeah, well, look, I mean, number one, what you're doing is amazing. I mean, just the athletic feat is amazing. The fact that you're doing it for such a great cause elevates it so much. And we talk about a lot of dark stuff on this podcast because it's a true crime podcast. And sometimes we get to the end of some of the stories and we're like, man, how do you draw any light out of this? And I hope that people who are listening recognize this is a real opportunity to make a difference in this world. You guys are doing it on the ground, one mile at a time, one child at a time. We're so happy to support you. We hope people out there will support you. We'll be praying for you, we'll be thinking about you. And thanks for what you do and thanks for joining us to talk about
- [36:57]
Brad Ortenzi
it, you know, sincerely, my pleasure. Love what you guys are doing and just love that you gave us the opportunity to share this. So thank you, really appreciate it.
- [37:04]
Nate Aiken
It's just always a pleasure and a blessing to be with you and just so appreciate your investment into Zoe.
- [37:10]
Alice
Thank you to both of you for bringing light into a very dark place and for giving your own time, energy, sweat, blood, quite literally for this organization. You guys go check out gozoe.org they have amazing resources on there. Every single one of us can stand in the breach, can be part of that. Prevention can be part of spotting the problem, can be part of getting help there. But first, you need to understand what it is. Second, make sure the people around you, whether it's the schools or other parents, know about these resources. And third, if you have the ability, pray for these Guys, pray for Brad and Randy, right. Who are going to be biking across America in order to raise money and then if you can, to give money to Zoe, because not all of us are able to dedicate our lives and our jobs to doing this, but we have people who are doing it, and we can at least support them financially because they can't do it for free. Thank you, guys. Are there any parting words you have, you know, no pressure at all. Brad, I'll start with you.
- [38:15]
Brad Ortenzi
Yeah. No, again, just thanks for the opportunity. Yeah. If anybody's listening, I really appreciate what you shared there of we can all do something. We can all stand in the gap and there's too many kids lives at stake for us not to do anything. So. So, yeah, just want to encourage. Sometimes people think of human trafficking. It's just this dark thing at. Oh, this Goliath. And we can't do anything about it. And love your people, love your community within your sphere. There's always those kids that need some help. And that's where it all starts.
- [38:41]
Alice
Nate, any last words? You're really the one. You know, we talked about prevention, and one of the major keys to prevention is education, and you are doing that day in and day out in the exact population where I think the vulnerability really begins. So do you have any parting words for us here?
- [38:57]
Nate Aiken
It certainly hits home through. Through that lens, Alice, I would just say. And closing up, like, I just want to brag on. On Brad a little bit. You want to know that if you're donating to a cause, that it's a worthy cause and it's going towards something productive and. And Zoe is exactly that. He's been put in places that are kind of unprecedented from a nonprofit standpoint, working hand in hand in government with local DA in Lancaster. And the state legislatures are looking at how do we replicate this across the commonwealth and hopefully we can do this throughout our country because it's obviously something that's under discussed. It's a bit of taboo and it. That needs to change. So we really appreciate this forum you guys are providing.
- [39:38]
Alice
Well, thank you both. Thank you, Brad. Thank you, Nate, for taking time tonight to talk to us about this. Gozoe.org you can go learn more about this. You can spread this information far and wide because this isn't happening to just a couple people. You heard at the beginning 50 million people are being trafficked today. This isn't a problem with the past. It is a problem right now in your communities, and you can do something about it. And if you have the ability, go sponsor these guys because there's no world where I'm ever going to be able to bike across America with no matter how many people. But they're doing it and they're doing it because they want to end child trafficking. And we hope that you share this episode and you share their information. Brad, Nate, thank you for what you're doing. I hope that you come back anytime. And Nate, we love lit it so much. We will certainly be back.
- [40:31]
Brett
Yeah. Brad, if you've, if you survive, join us after it's over and tell us all about it.
- [40:36]
Brad Ortenzi
That's great. Hopefully it will.
- [40:38]
Alice
That sounds great. Well, thank you guys so much for being with us. It is our privilege to have you guys here. We can't wait to hear about this. Maybe we'll have you back in July when you've had a little bit of some carbs and some water.
- [40:50]
Brett
Sounds great.
- [40:51]
Brad Ortenzi
Sounds great.
- [40:51]
Alice
But until then. Hi, I'm Alice. And I'm Brett and this is the prosecutor's legal police. And Nate, you, you are with. I know you're at Liditz elementary but are you also just a volunteer, a fan of.
- [41:27]
Nate Aiken
Yeah, I'm a big fan of Brad. That's about sums it up.
- [41:30]
Alice
I like that. I like that a lot right now.
- [41:35]
Nate Aiken
I got no, he, he, I didn't even have a bike and this dude was like listen, I'm bike across the country. I'm like, you're nuts. It just quickly matriculated into hey, there's this race across America. Find eight guys that are willing to fundraise a bunch and share the news and raise awareness and train like crazy and turn into something pretty cool.
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