SALIDA, Calif. — Twelve people were arrested over the weekend in Stanislaus County after a major human trafficking sting.
It happened at a hotel right off of Highway 99 in Salida.
"It's absolutely in our backyard," said Sgt. Joshua Clayton, a spokesman for the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Office.
Some hotels many of us drive by every day to get to work on Highway 99 or even I-5 have dark stories hiding behind locked doors.
"We have it here in our county. It passes through. We have I-5, we have Highway 99, we see a pipeline of girls that come up from Los Angeles, Sacramento, the Bay area," Clayton said.
"So, it's this big circuit. We're right in the corridor of where these men can run their product. They see them as product," said Heather Antonini, an outreach specialist for the Center for Human Services.
Authorities with the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Office, the Patterson Police Department, and multiple other agencies used a Salida hotel, just one stop in the pipeline, as the spot where they would initiate their sting operation.
"Basically, what happens is we go online, we put out different ads, and people come and solicit us and they show up either looking to pay for sex or looking to provide services for money," Clayton said.
Three people were arrested on pimping charges, the rest of the men arrested are facing solicitation charges and the female victims involved were also arrested on prostitution charges.
Investigators say those arrests are actually meant to get the victims away from their pimps.
"By separating these women from their pimps, we give them the space and time and safety and distance to hopefully break the cycle and latch onto some of those resources and hopefully break the cycle," he said.
But local advocates say breaking the cycle is much easier said than done.
"A lot of people, even in my life, they'll say 'Oh, why don't they just run away? Why don't they just, if he lets her go to the bathroom, why doesn't she just tell someone?' And it's not that easy because there's a whole process of grooming and manipulating and trapping these young ladies," Antonini said.
Help from the Haven Women's Center of Stanislaus was on hand for the sting on Friday night, but it's common the women involved don't always take the help, and for some, it wasn't their first time being arrested.
"The hope is that she takes the help and never looks back, but the reality is, it might take several times for my colleagues to meet with her to build the trust," she said.
The sheriff's office wouldn't say which hotel this happened at but they did say the hotel staff goes through quarterly training to recognize potential human trafficking victims.
Continue the conversation with Lena on Facebook.