On Nov. 17, 2013, Zoe Campos left her house for the last time. After a night at home with Zoe, her sister woke up the next morning, and Zoe was gone. The Campos family reported her missing the next day.
Five years later, the Campos family laid Zoe to rest after her remains were recovered from a makeshift grave in the yard of a Central Lubbock home, despite talks of possible involvement in human trafficking.
From the beginning, Zoe’s case, like other missing persons cases, was investigated as a homicide although the outcome had yet to be determined, said Lubbock Police Detective David Schreiber.
Schreiber, who worked on Zoe’s case, said when a person goes missing, investigators treat it as a potential homicide.
“You work it that way in the sense that there is always a possibility that this person could be dead,” Schreiber said, “if they turn up, and you find them, that’s great. But if not, you worked the case correctly from start to finish.”
Brought to light was the issue of human trafficking. Although it was reported by her family during the initial investigation, this was not the cause of Zoe’s disappearance. However, it started a much larger conversation about missing persons cases in West Texas.
Following years of searching, the Campos family learned of Zoe’s unfortunate fate, while many local cases remained unresolved, leaving questions and not enough answers.
Originally created to search for Zoe, a local organization, Voice of the Missing, is dedicated to finding those answers while easing the pain of families with a missing loved one. With a growing need, the group shares pictures and information of many missing persons in the area on their Facebook page. Although they work with limited resources, they help families search for the missing any way they can.
Founder Nina Valdez is also a director of care for children at Texas Boys Ranch as her mission is to help others while serving her community.
“[Zoe] is not just a child on a flyer; she was someone that you really get to know,” she said. “I heard her voice on videos. I know everything that her mother told me, nicknames. You get to know her on a personal level, and she becomes like part of your family. She became part of us.”
Valdez’s partner at Voice of the Missing, Jennifer Castillo, said the organization also does “boots on the ground” work for families by creating and placing flyers around town. For her and the organization, keeping the missing person’s story alive is key in giving families hope.
Castillo said the dates on the cases they cover vary, with one case older than a decade. For her, this work is about giving much needed attention to these cases.
“You become their family,” Castillo said. “You get to know the missing child even though you never met them. You get to see them through the eyes of the parent, and you see the heartache and you see the devastation that’s left.”
The pain, Castillo said, is caused not only by the initial shock of a missing loved one, but in awaiting that missing person’s return and not knowing what the missing person is experiencing as each day passes.
From Missing to Trafficked
On the organization’s Facebook page, there are multiple posts on the topic of human trafficking as the group sees it as a growing issue to be addressed, especially when looking at missing persons cases. And while many people think it is more of a problem overseas, Valdez said it is happening right here in the Hub City.
“I have dealt with sex trafficked children. They can be sold up to 10 times,” Valdez said. “There is your money. You can sell your drug, but then how much money are going to make off selling a child. It doubles so there is where a problem is. We need to start educating our families and our children on these predators.”
In September 2018, Attorney General Ken Paxton made a trip to Midland to discuss sex trafficking in Texas. According to his office’s website, approximately 79,000 young people are victims of sex trafficking in Texas at any moment.
Voice of the Missing uses private investigators to help the families search for their loved one. In the Campos case, Paula Boudreaux , a certified private investigator, assisted in the search.
In addition to the Campos case, Boudreaux has also dealt with human trafficking cases. In one particular instance, she said, she dealt with victims ranging from 13 to 18 years old found in a hotel in the Dallas area.
Because human trafficking is an illegal, yet lucrative industry, Boudreaux said traffickers use drugs to control the victims to keep them on the streets. Some victims, she said, enter the world of sex trafficking because they are vulnerable – young, bullied or alienated.
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline data,Texas is reportedly one of the highest in the country in calls for human trafficking tips, second only to California.
When investigating human trafficking cases, Boudreaux said it is difficult because of the multiple people involved.
“First you have to figure out who the players are, and sometimes that’s the hardest. You’ve got to figure that out and you have to go from there,” said Boudreaux, who is a member of the Apogean Group, a Dallas PI agency.
As reported by the Administration for Children and Families in Texas, motels and hotels are the second most common venue for sex trafficking in the state.
“You have to tread very lightly – very delicately because these people don’t really want to be messed with, and if a PI is looking then they get a little jumpy,” Boudreaux said. “However, you have to figure out the particulars of who they were hanging with and where they were going.”
According to the Lubbock Avalanche Journal, Lubbock police arrested nine people associated with trafficking in 2017 while working with Federal law enforcement- and this is not the only report of its kind. Hotels and social media were reported as places of police attention.
When asked about human trafficking investigation, Schreiber said many people who end up trafficked first start out around people of that business or already around people in the world of illegal activity.
“So human trafficking is kind of an interesting thing,” Schreiber said. “Typically in this area it takes the form of prostitution, and it’s far less glamorous than what people are imagining.”
While it can be a hot button topic, he said the people most at risk are those already in a vulnerable position, not necessarily college students, as often portrayed in movies.
Voice of Hope
In 2011, a young woman was interviewed at a Lubbock hospital. The group who met her there, Voice of Hope, discovered the need for services and awareness for sex trafficking victims.
Leslie Timmons, the volunteer coordinator for Voice of Hope, has been with the organization for nearly ten years. The agency provides advocates for victims navigating the aftermath of a sexual assault.
Whether it be counseling, medical help, or dealing with law enforcement, Voice of Hope’s services are free of charge. Timmons said the case in 2011 alerted the group to common red flags victims of this organized crime show.
When an advocate arrived to the hospital, Timmons said the girl claimed to be 18 years old and with her father. With nobody in the waiting room and suspicions about her age, Timmons said the group knew something was not right.
Wearing a hoodie and avoiding eye contact, the girl reluctantly shared her story to the advocate on the scene. Timmons said the girl was exhibiting all the warning signs of a bigger problem. Finally, Timmons said the girl claimed to be involved in a child pornography ring outside of Lubbock and other children were involved.
“So at this point when she says children are going to be harmed,” she said, “we have an obligation to contact law enforcement. Our advocate stepped out of the room to call our director to see what are we going to do now that she has told us that children are involved. When she stepped back in the room, the girl was gone. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen her since.”
After this incident, the group focused more on human trafficking in the area. Voice of Hope volunteers surveyed those who work near children, including teachers, medical practitioners, and janitors, for common signs of trafficking. Timmons said 73 percent said they had seen these signs before.
“The biggest population at risk to be recruited into sex trafficking is 12 to 14 year olds,” she said. “For lots of reasons, they are very vulnerable, they are very trusting, they share everything on social media and traffickers make more money off of younger kids.”
According to the Voice of Hope’s data from 2017, almost 30 percent of the victims they saw in Lubbock were ages 18 to 25; nearly 12 percent were younger than 6.
“The first thing is to know that it happens here,” she said. “Lubbock has a lot of the same issues that a big city has. A lot of people think that we are kind of protected out here. Know that traffickers are out there. The typical situation is contacting someone on a social media platform.”
Kenneth Castillo, a primary prevention specialist at Voice of Hope, educates youth in the community in order to stop the demand for sex-work. In his talks with students, Castillo discusses topics from consent, to healthy relationships. He said young people can’t model relationships if they have never seen a healthy one before. The goal, he said, is to stop the ‘John’ before he becomes a person who would purchase sex.
Castillo said there are many factors as to why this area of West Texas experiences human trafficking. One of which is, it is not spoken about, he said, making it a hidden epidemic.
With major thoroughfares, Castillo said, traffickers can run circuits from Amarillo to Lubbock, through the Midland and Odessa area, and down to El Paso. While people think Lubbock may be safe, technology makes illegal operations an unwelcomed possibility for any city. In addition to this, Castillo said, traffickers follow money in order to meet demand.
According to a report by the U.S Energy Information Administration, the Permian Basin/Midland area produces around 13 percent of the country’s oil. This raises wages and the standard of living in the area – it also attracts business, some of which is illegal.
“There is a lot of money out here in Lubbock,” Castillo said. “We call it the Hub City because it is a hub in the middle of nowhere basically of Texas,” Castillo said. “We have cotton money here. We have oil money here. We have all kinds of energy money here.”
Many people think it’s not a homegrown problem, Castillo said. The influx they have seen has not been foreign, but domestic.
“This crime is definitely alive and well today,” he said. “Those 69 sex trafficking victims that we found last year – they were all American, born and raised in the United States. Every sex trafficking victim that we have seen is American.”
As reported by the U.S State Department, there is a link between extractive industry and human trafficking on a global scale. Castillo said the link is visible in West Texas.
“If you look at your cities – I call it the chain,” Valdez said. “The chain will run from Lubbock, and it’ll go into Odessa, and it’ll go into New Mexico. Now if you look at the chain, if you really study it, these are all oil fields.”
Going Forward
For Leslie Timmons, Kenneth Castillo, and those with Voice of Hope, the goal is to continue the recovery process for the victims of human/sex trafficking and sexual assault.
Timmons said the key is to help the victim regain trust and control in their life, which for a victim of this crime can be extraordinarily difficult.
For Castillo, he said the trauma of the human trafficking crimes leads victims on a long recovery process, similar to that of service members returning from war. Although the problems and circumstances are different, both issues carry deep-seated pain that require intensive treatment.
“(These victims) are getting the same kind of post traumatic therapy that those guys are coming back with,” he said.
As for Valdez and those who helped search for Zoe Campos, closure in this case comes from getting to end the search – but the the search continues for other missing people.
“There is closure in the sense that she will wake up and not wonder where her child is,” Valdez said. “There is closure not worrying did her child eat, does someone have her, is something happening to her. There is where you find closure. The closure is we don’t have to search anymore, and we don’t have to wonder what is our next step in trying to find her. As far as closure, a family will never have that closure. It’s just a day by day healing.”
Valdez’s partner at Voice of the Missing, Jennifer Castillo, said they are now focusing on a number of missing persons cases in the area. Joey Gonzales, Dane Hubbard, Maegan Hembree, and Jennifer Wilkerson are all reported missing from Lubbock.
Due to this demand, Valdez said Voice of the Missing is hoping to expand their operations to help more families find their loved ones, while educating the community. The goal, she said, is to go non-profit not only to work with general missing persons cases and families, but to also confront trafficking.
“They are always going to be two or three steps ahead of us so we need to stay with the game here,” Valdez said. “That’s why I educate as much as I can.”
About Anna Holland
