Padecky: Petaluma swimathon sheds light on human trafficking

PETALUMA - On July 1, Alex Tapia knew the woman wasn't going to stay the night. He had been at the job for a year, a desk clerk at the Motel 6 in Rohnert Park, and patterns had emerged, clear patterns. A man might not look him in the eye when reaching for the room key. A woman, alone and without luggage, would hurriedly check in, like she was on a deadline. Level of appearance, mannerisms and clothing, all of it, means something. Tapia so wanted to speak.

'I always wanted to ask the women why they got into (prostitution)?' said Tapia, 22. 'How did it happen? Why don't you just get away?'

Tapia never did. A proper fellow, a recent graduate in French from SSU, working to pay off his student debt, Tapia was keen on respecting privacy. So without delay Tapia checked in the woman, who the Rohnert Park police said later was 24 and from Sacramento.

'Now I wonder if I could have said something that would have made a difference,' Tapia said.

It's Saturday and Tapia is standing poolside at the Petaluma Swim Center, having just swum some laps for the fundraiser: 'End Human Trafficking One Lap At a Time.' (Donations also can be made online: notinourcounty.org.) For a few moments there, regret was not sitting on his shoulders. The memory, however, is not so easily displaced.

'I thought it was a joke,' Tapia said. It was a text from the night clerk. Tapia got off work at 10 p.m. on July 1. Mid-morning the text came. A prostitute has been shot around 2 a.m. The same woman you checked in, dude.

'It almost felt like it came from a television show,' Tapia said.

Like a Jerry Springer Show, all sensational and vapid blah-blah. Except it wasn't. Human trafficking, at least for Tapia, no longer was something happening to someone somewhere else, like on a backstreet in Bangkok. It was happening in Sonoma County, our land of plenty, so spoiled are we that our biggest headache comes from that rush-hour traffic, and it's getting worse and I don't know how much longer I can take it, gosh darn it.

Sonoma County, our protected bubble of comfort and safety, immune to real-world nastiness because, well, that's how we want it. We work hard for our cocoon.

Which is why this column will make people uneasy, why they won't like it and why they wish I had never written it.

'If those people (pimps, prostitutes) live anywhere,' said swimmer Marty Sullivan of Penngrove, 'they must live in the Tenderloin, right?'

Sullivan works in San Francisco for a legal publishing company that has a philanthropic conscience, educating its employees to human trafficking. 'It's such a horrible crime it could never happen here, right?'

The insulation is somewhat logical in its origin. I don't know pimps or prostitutes. I don't know any girls or teens trafficked for sex, forced labor or indentured servitude. So if I don't see it, if I don't go to lunch or have a beer with those people, it must not exist. It's what we don't want to see that disturbs. So we don't see it unless it gets in our faces. Even Katie Sanchez has to work at it.

'I have to keep putting it in front of me, that it's here in Sonoma County, and I have to keep on doing it, over and over, to keep it real,' she said.

Sanchez is on the board of directors for Verity, a Sonoma County rape, trauma and healing center for sexual assault victims. A woman who has made it her job to create awareness and support for sexual crimes still has to remind herself these crimes know no borders, that there is no such thing as a protected bubble.

'It's hard to see prostitutes as victims,' said swimmer Karen O'Brien of Petaluma, who coached high school swimming at Casa Grande, St. Vincent, Petaluma and Cardinal Newman. 'It's easy to believe it's a choice they make when it isn't.'

Gosh, I could go to law school — since I have such great self-esteem and freedom of movement and a terrific family background — but I think I'll become a hooker instead.

Yes, those are raw, unflinching, disturbing words. But it is precisely that kind of language that will wake up Sonoma County. Sonoma County doesn't ignore crisis. Sonoma County responds to the human condition.

'There are a thousand nonprofits in the county,' Sanchez said. A thousand non-profits charged with a duty to alleviate suffering.

When we see the face of a cancer survivor, when we hear the slurred speech of a stroke victim, when we track the long scar of abdominal surgery, the urge of involvement is immediate. We can feel it to our marrow.

Human trafficking, in comparison, is invisible. Until Sonoma County makes it otherwise. We have been very good at being aggressive in that area.

'As a kid I grew up on the Peninsula,' O'Brien said. 'Sonoma County reminds me of what the Peninsula used to be but no longer is. The people who live here work here and care about the place.'

Sonoma County is indeed a neighborhood, Petaluma potholes and all. The world is out there all right but it's in here as well. There are no borders to protect us, only our duty to do the right thing. Like Alex Tapia has decided to do.

With a year on the job, Tapia guesses he had at least two prostitutes a week pass in front of the front desk at the Motel 6. He said, 'That doesn't count the johns or the pimps or a woman who gets a room for others.'

Having enough experience to tell the difference between those who will stay the night and those who won't, Tapia has created a gesture that lets them know he knows. It's directed to the men who ask for a room.

Tapia extends his right index finger and his right thumb in front of his eyes, dips he two digits slightly to his face and then points to the man.

I have marked you. I know why you are here. You are not invisible to me and neither are your women.

Consider it a step, however modest, for Sonoma County standing up for itself. Not in my neighborhood, says the gesture.

To contact Bob Padecky email him at bobpadecky@gmail.com.