Chapter 6 - Trafficked At The Mexico Border

My Memoir - Where the Dark Things Grow

Feb 12, 2026

**The following is part of my memoir. Please read this page for more information, as well as an easy-access list of each chapter.

Note: The images used in this chapter are stock photos—not real images from the time of the story.

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-7:42

“For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”

Psalm 91:11–12

Two years after the high-speed car chase, in 1991, Jessica and a friend were drunk one night and decided they wanted to go to California. Somehow, they found their way to a truck stop in Galloway late at night and met an older male truck driver willing to give two young teenage girls a ride all the way to Los Angeles.
“Sure, I’ll give you a ride,” he said, adjusting the waist of his jeans underneath a bulging beer belly. His CB handle was “Southern Comfort,” he told them. “Right after my stop in Mississippi, I’ll be headin’ out West.”
Without a thought, Jessica and her friend climbed into the semi-truck, and Jessica was, once again, on her way to the ever-elusive state of California.
Or so she thought.
They traveled as far as Mississippi with this man, and although he did nothing to make Jessica believe he meant them any harm, she grew increasingly wary of him and sobered up so fast that she took note of it. She had been drunk many times, and never had she felt every bit of the drunkenness leave her body in what felt like seconds.
With her senses clear, she became even more aware of her predicament.
Suddenly, she heard: Jessie, you need to get off this truck. But act casually.
Even when she did talk to herself on occasion, as we all do, she’d never referred to herself by name, and only her family ever called her “Jessie”. Briefly, she thought about how strange that was, too, but couldn’t think about it long because she needed to get her and her friend away from this man. Her friend had passed out by this time, so she wasn’t going to be of any help.
“Hey, um, I need to use the restroom, and I’m starving,” she told the man casually, trying not to let him onto her suspicions. “Can we stop at a gas station?”
The driver grunted his annoyance under his breath, took the next exit a few minutes later, and they pulled into the brightly lit parking lot of another truck stop.
“Stay here, and I’ll go inside and get you something to eat,” he said.
Jessica was glad that she didn’t really need to use the restroom as she’d claimed, because it was apparent he didn’t want her to leave the truck.
The man probably thought that in her friend’s condition, neither of them would leave, so he took his keys and headed inside the convenience store.
“Get up.” Jessica shook her friend, and she woke up, dazed from the alcohol. “We’re getting off this truck—now.”
Jessica managed to help her friend climb down from the truck, and just as they were heading toward the front of the store, where there were more people, Southern Comfort exited the store and came toward them with a bag of chips.
“Hey, where are ya goin’? I got you some food!” He raised the bag.
“Thanks, but we’ll find another ride,” Jessica told him.
Southern Comfort’s demeanor shifted to indignance; he said a few curses, looked around at the people, and then walked back to his truck and left.
Relief washed over Jessica like a crashing wave.

It would seem I dodged some kind of bullet, but then it became clear to me just a few minutes later that I absolutely had.

My friend and I walked through the giant parking lot beneath the bright lights. Another man walked up; he was of average height, skinny, and wore glasses.

“What are you two doing out here?” he asked. “Where are you going?”

For a split second, I was leery of this man, and with good reason. But then immediately I heard that voice inside my head again, and this time instinctively knew that it wasn’t my own. “You can trust him,” the voice said. Even after the close call with the first truck driver, and knowing we had made a huge mistake and were in a dangerous situation, I knew with my whole heart that I would be safe—and that I could trust that voice.

“We’d like to go back home to Arkansas,” I told the man.

“Come on, and I’ll take you.” He waved at us to follow.

You’d think I was crazy to get into another truck with a stranger rather than calling someone to come and pick us up, but that’s exactly what I did. And not once during the many hours-long drive, at night, alone in a semi-truck with this stranger, did I feel I was in any danger.

His CB handle was “Pack Rat”. While on the way home, he told us he had a daughter and that he couldn’t imagine her being out there like my friend and I were, around so many predators. He explained to us what a “lot lizard” is (a truck-stop prostitute), and that we could have been easily mistaken as such. But what shocked me the most and made the blood in my veins run cold was when he told me, “That truck driver was going to take you to the Mexico border and sell you.”

“Sell us?” I asked, not sure what that meant, but I knew it was something awful.

Pack Rat shook his head and sighed. “There’s a lot of human trafficking that goes on at the border, and young girls like you, especially with blue eyes, can fetch a lot of money.” (Decades later, after marrying my Mexican husband, I learned that this “blue eyes” thing is absolutely true.)

I still didn’t understand what I would have been sold for exactly—I was sixteen, and had never heard of these things before—and when I asked again, he reluctantly told me, “Sex slavery,” as if he felt ashamed having to say the word “sex” to two teenage girls.

He explained that he knew it was Southern Comfort’s intention because he had heard him talking about it in code on the CB radio to other truck drivers, but also that it was a common thing that happened. Every. Single. Day.

When daylight came, Pack Rat stopped at a diner and bought my friend and me a good meal, then he took us the rest of the way home and dropped us off in North Little Rock, at a gas station that, at the time of writing this, I live within walking distance of. Every time I pass it now, I think of that night.

Some might call these coincidences, but I call them the Hand of God. God did not want me to go to California, and He made sure I never made it there (until much later in life). He protected me; if not from that earthquake or those riots, or from human trafficking, then from a multitude of other things that could have easily happened to a teenage girl traveling alone with strangers or with just-as-senseless friends.

I was a terrible teenager. I was lost, alone, and confused—and the Enemy reveled in my difficulty and suffering. He led me to believe the only comforts I had were my just-as-troubled friends, an alcohol addiction, and a string of guys who abused me by pretending to love me.