After a month-long trip, the most recent team of riders for Pedal the Pacific stopped in Santa Barbara on Friday to meet with officials from the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office to discuss sex trafficking.
The nine-member team includes college-age women from all over the country who gather to ride down the West Coast to raise awareness about sex trafficking and to raise funds for advocacy groups that help survivors.
So far, the group has raised more than $62,000 of its $80,000 goal.
During the trek, the team also meets members of law enforcement, the legal system, survivors of sex trafficking, and those working to prevent it or overcome it.
In Santa Barbara, the team met with District Attorney John Savrnoch, who called the annual meeting one of the “highlights of the year.”
Also in attendance were Chief Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Karapetian, Victim-Witness Assistance Program director Megan Rheinschild, and Tiffany Carty, supervisor of the Victim-Witness Assistance Program.
During the discussion, the DA’s Office team explained how they have worked to help victims of human trafficking by supporting them and building trust in hopes of having them testify in criminal cases against traffickers.
They also recounted how they have worked to stop charging victims with crimes they may have committed while they were being abused or at the behest of their abuser.
The Pedal the Pacific trip begins in Seattle, and the team travels all the way down to San Diego. This year, the journey began on June 7.
The bike ride was started in 2017 by three women and recent college graduates — two from the University of Texas at Austin and the third from the University of Arkansas.
Along with raising awareness, the trip is described as a leadership development program for the team.
The goal of developing new members is why the team changes each year. According to Savannah Lovelace, one of the founders, after the current ride, the program will have 89 alumna.
“The team is always by themselves because, in addition to its being a fundraising ride, it’s a leadership development program for young women,” she said.
“They’re learning about how to become advocates, how to fundraise and talk with communities and (speak publicly).”
Lovelace said she and her friends started the program after learning about sex trafficking and how common it was in the United States.
“At first, I thought it was only something that happened in third world countries, which is a very common misconception, but then quickly learned that it happens here in the U.S.,” she said.
They also saw that many people were too intimidated to even acknowledge what sex trafficking was.
Lovelace said the goal of the ride was to do something crazy to bring attention to the issue.
According to Caitlin Wheetley, a 2025 team member from Eureka, the organization helps the women prepare, beginning in January, by providing them with bikes and training.
The team also undergoes a training camp to help them build up their endurance for the trip.
Wheetley, who will be attending UC Davis in the fall, said she was already active in advocacy groups in her hometown but became interested in Pedal the Pacific. She applied for the team and was accepted.
“I did sports, but I was definitely not a bike rider,” she said. “Not a cyclist at all.
“I think my family thought I was a little bit crazy when I told them that I was going to be biking 1,700 miles because they were like, ‘What the heck? You don’t bike at all.’”
Overall, Wheetley says the trip has been eye-opening and that she learned that sex trafficking is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the United States.
Afterward, the riders met with members of the Junior League of Santa Barbara, which established and provides ongoing support for S.A.F.E. (Saving At-risk Youth from Exploitation) House Santa Barbara, a six-bed, Short-Term Residential Therapeutic Program designed to meet the specific needs of minor girls who have been liberated from sex trafficking.
Earlier on Friday, the team toured Olive Crest’s Hope Refuge campus high atop the Santa Ynez Mountains with Hope Refuge co-founder Chuck Cook.
The program provides individualized counseling, therapeutic care and education for nine minor girls, ages 12-17, and all sex trafficking survivors, at the 214-acre live-in center.
Earlier in the week, the team was hosted in Lompoc by the North County Rape Crisis & Child Protection Center and met at the Hilton Garden Inn with representatives of the Lompoc Rotary Club, Lompoc-Vandenberg Branch of American Association of University Women and Vandenberg Space Force Base.
After arriving in Santa Barbara on Thursday afternoon, the riders have been staying with several host families from All Saints By-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito, with support from the All Saints Church Outreach Committee, Junior League of Santa Barbara, Noozhawk, Olive Crest’s Hope Refuge, the Santa Barbara Club, Taqueria Cuernavaca and art educator Sondra Weiss.
The current ride ends in 10 days, and the team is closing in on its goal of raising $80,000. Click here to make an online donation.