
08/18/2025
Partnerships matter — and one of the most impactful for me has been with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).
My journey started in 2016, not with NCMEC directly, but with ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children). One of their detectives, using her own lived experience, had developed and delivered an internet safety presentation at a local high school. At the time, very few parents knew how to even begin these conversations with their kids about online risks because we hadn’t grown up with this reality ourselves. That training opened my eyes. It showed how much we didn’t understand and how dangerous silence could be.
What followed was collaboration. ICAC, Homeland Security, local law enforcement, and NCMEC — all of them played roles in educating and supporting communities.
Fast forward to about two years ago: my tattoo world and the human trafficking world collided. That’s when NCMEC pulled me into conversations with their Human Trafficking team. They shared what they were hearing directly from cases, where signs had been missed, where victims sat right in front of someone who didn’t recognize the red flags. From those hard lessons, we worked together to add a different kind of training into what I now bring to tattoo artists added to their safety training we've been providing them over the years. We end every training with this discussion now.
That training helps artists know what to look for, when and how to approach conversations about tattoos, and what red flags may indicate trafficking. And it gives MDTs a better grasp of how tattoos are used as control, and what safe, trauma-informed approaches look like.
Now, when I’m teaching in tattoo shops or conventions, the partnership with NCMEC plays a central role. Human trafficking is hidden in plain sight and with the right partnerships, we can make sure fewer lives are overlooked.