On the 40th day of a 50-day journey from Seattle to San Diego, the 2024 Pedal the Pacific team stopped in Santa Barbara on Wednesday and met with representatives of the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office to discuss sex trafficking.

The seven college-age women began their 1,700-mile journey on June 8 and have raised more than $66,000 to help fight human trafficking.

On their journey down the coast, they have met with nonprofit leaders working with survivors, and spoken with law enforcement officials and prosecutors on the front lines of the issue.

Pedal the Pacific began in 2017 with three women who decided to cycle 1,700 miles to bring awareness of sex trafficking in their communities.

Since then, a new team of college-age women is selected to ride each summer, bringing awareness and raising funds.

On Wednesday, the team sat down with District Attorney John Savrnoch, Assistant District Attorney Kelly Duncan, Chief Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Karapetian and Victim-Witness Assistance Program director Megan Rheinschild to learn about their local efforts to stop sex trafficking.

Grace Hornung, one of this year’s riders, said the conversation about the efforts being made locally was encouraging.

“To know that there’s such a strong task force and team in a community like this that has human trafficking on the forefront of their mind and are aware it’s a problem is refreshing,” she said.

“It’s really encouraging to hear that that’s going on when a lot of times it can feel like we’re fighting an uphill battle of trying to convince people that human trafficking is happening.”

Hornung, a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, heard about Pedal the Pacific through social media in 2021 and learned that her hometown of Houston has the highest number of sex trafficking cases in the country.

“It was really shocking to me that this place that I call home, that feels so safe to me, is not for so many people,” she said.

While the team has been cycling since June 8, none of the riders said they consider themselves cyclists or athletes.

Hornung said biking has been the most challenging part of the journey. 

“I think most of us being from the Southeast didn’t train with a lot of elevation,” she said. “Biking out of Seattle with hill after hill after hill was something that none of us was really used to, and also biking with an extra 60 pounds on the back of your bike was also something I didn’t necessarily properly train for.

“It was a hard learning curve the first couple of weeks, but it’s been wonderful to learn and grow and get stronger together.”

All of the riders had their own reason for cycling, but at the root was that they heard about sex trafficking and wanted to do something. 

Alexis Couret, a rider from New Orleans and a senior at the University of Alabama, said the issue of sex trafficking has become more personal the more she learns about it. 

“The more we’ve learned about how manipulative the grooming processes are and the way they exploit people, particularly already in less than ideal circumstances, it becomes more and more unacceptable,” she said.

“It hurts me to see vulnerable populations being exploited in a way like that — just no regard with how it affects them or their futures.”

Throughout the journey, the team has met with nonprofit organizations working with survivors, law enforcement officials, and strangers on the road who might have had misconceptions about sex trafficking.

In the months leading up to their trip, the cyclists had regular meetings and book clubs to learn about human trafficking.

Couret said one of the most common misconceptions about human trafficking is that it starts by getting snatched off the street when, in reality, grooming usually is a long and manipulative process between perpetrators and survivors.

The team also learned that 80% of people being trafficked receive health care.

“That’s something that’s going unnoticed in that field, which is a shocking statistic to me because they’re in situations where they could receive help or could get noticed as a victim of trafficking and they’re not,” Couret said.

During their visit to the District Attorney’s Office, the cyclists heard about the county’s human trafficking task force, a collaborative partnership involving

multiple agencies. The riders heard from prosecutors about how solicitors and people running trafficking rings are caught, and how they work with the women being trafficked. 

The team also heard about pending legislation, such as state Senate Bill 1414 that, if enacted, would make it a felony to solicit sex from a minor; right now, it’s only a misdemeanor.

Each year, the team sets a fundraising goal to benefit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So far this summer, this team has raised $66,792 and is $3,208 from its goal of $70,000. Click here to make an online donation.

Cumulatively, over the years, Pedal the Pacific has raised more than $1 million for the cause, which includes grants to nonprofit organizations the riders meet along the way in Washington, Oregon and California.

Last year, the team presented a $5,000 grant to the North County Rape Crisis & Child Protection Center.

The team members are scheduled to end their journey in San Diego on July 27.

Hornung said she’s looking forward to soaking up the last few days with the team before they all return home and begin to bring awareness to sex trafficking in their own communities.

Following the DA’s Office visit, the team met with Parker Clay founders Brittany and Ian Bentley, who described their work empowering impoverished and trafficked women in Ethiopia through the creation of handcrafted premium leather goods.

Afterward, they met with members of the Junior League of Santa Barbara, which established and provides ongoing support for S.A.F.E. (Saving A​t-risk Youth f​rom 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.

On Thursday, the team toured Olive Crest’s Hope Refuge campus high atop the Santa Ynez Mountains with Hope Refuge co-founder Sally 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.

After arriving in Santa Barbara on Tuesday afternoon, the riders have been staying with several host families from All Saints By-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito, with support from California Coast Naturals and Cindy and Craig Makela, Junior League of Santa Barbara, Kyle’s Kitchen, Noozhawk, Oak Cottage of Santa Barbara Memory Care, Olive Crest’s Hope Refuge, Parker Clay, the Santa Barbara Club, Uncle Chen’s Restaurant, Velo Pro Cyclery, art educator Sondra Weiss and Yona Redz.

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, Vandenberg Space Force Base and the Village Dirtbags mountain biking club.