“There were so many times that law enforcement missed it,” Karla Solomon reflects. “Or just somebody in the public missed the signs. Nobody did anything, nobody said anything–and it was right there in plain sight.”
Before Karla was known as a survivor and an expert in human trafficking, Karla’s life was filled with being mother of three, a restaurant manager, and a full-time college student. Life may have looked good from the outside, but she was struggling under the weight of past trauma. That trauma became exacerbated by an addiction to pain medication following an emergency surgery, triggering flashbacks that eventually became too much to bear.
It was in this moment of vulnerability that Karla reached out for help to someone who promised to solve her problems. But it soon became clear those were not his intentions.
A Persona for Profit
The transition from affection to exploitation was hauntingly quiet. One night, the man she trusted placed an ad on a classified website. He gave her a name that wasn’t hers– “Alexia, the Australian Princess” – and marketed her with photos of a complete stranger. When he told her she had to dye her hair blonde to match the images, Karla realized she was being replaced by a persona he could control.
“This ad had all these acronyms and language…things that I didn’t really understand,” Karla says. “I knew I was about to be his next victim.”
What followed was a harrowing journey through the American heartland. From Baton Rouge to Denver and every city in between, Karla was forced to meet a quota of $1,500 a day. She lived in constant, quiet terror, even during the moments when she was feet away from help.
On one particular cold night in Texas, the red flags were everywhere: bruises on her skin, fear in her eyes, and a trafficker who spoke for her. When the police responded to a seemingly routine call, Karla waited for the question that would save her: Are you safe? It never came. The officers, untrained in the complex nuances of human trafficking, issued a warning and let them go.
“The misunderstanding cost me years of pain,” Karla reflects. “When no one noticed, it became easy to believe the abuse was somehow my fault.”
The Moment Everything Changed
The turning point came when Karla was finally identified by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in a hotel hallway. This time, the interaction was fundamentally different. Instead of a routine check or an aggressive interrogation, the investigators led with recognition and empathy.
For the first time in years, Karla wasn’t being questioned alongside her trafficker–she wasn’t being spoken to as a “quota,” but as a human being. The officers used her name and asked the simple question that changed everything. “Karla, are you safe?” Karla collapsed. “I think you guys just saved my life,” she whispered. That single, trauma-informed interaction sparked a decade-long journey of healing, unlearning shame, and replacing it with the truth of her own value.
The Full Circle: Training the Front Lines
Today, Karla’s story has come full circle. She is no longer the woman waiting to be seen; she is the expert teaching others how to see.
Karla now works with HTI as a survivor consultant and recently returned to the same streets in Texas where she was once overlooked. But this time, she stood at the front of a room filled with law enforcement officers and prosecutors, using her lived experience to bridge the gap between “the job” and the human reality of trafficking.
“Every time I stand in front of a room full of officers, I think back to the younger version of me, the one who prayed that someone would notice,” she says. “Today, I get to be the voice for her.”
And the officers that HTI is training get to be the ones who will now notice.
A Ripple Effect of Hope
The journey from Baton Rouge to Denver was a cycle of exploitation, but today, Karla Solomon is breaking that cycle. HTI’s work in Texas is helping create the standard for how officers and prosecutors across the state identify and protect people like Karla, and hold traffickers accountable.
“Whenever a trafficker is arrested, it is a ripple effect,” Karla explains. “It isn’t just about stopping my trafficker from hurting me. It is about stopping him from hurting the next victim.
HTI works to ensure that people like Karla are found and heard – and that their traffickers are held accountable to never harm again.
