It's Not a White Van: A Former Marine on the Human Trafficking Myths We Need to Unlearn

You probably know the picture. A white van. A stranger with candy. A kid grabbed in a parking lot while their mom loads the groceries.

That's what most of us think human trafficking looks like. According to Korrin, it's almost never what trafficking looks like.

Korrin has spent her adult life inside this work. She's a former Marine, an attorney, a volunteer prosecutor, and the founder of Lantern Rescue, an organization fighting trafficking in 18 countries. When she talks about trafficking, she doesn't describe strangers in vans. She describes job offers on Instagram. Friend requests from someone who says you played soccer together three years ago. Parents. People the victim already knew and trusted.

Sitting across from her, I realized I'd been watching for the wrong thing my whole life.

From Marine Linguist to Lantern Rescue: Korrin's Story

Korrin didn't plan any of this. Her political science degree got her, in her words, exactly zero jobs on its own, so she spent about a year selling insurance, a job where nobody calls you on their good days.

She'd always wanted to join the military, so she called her dad, a former Marine infantryman, to ask what he thought. He gave her his ranking. Air Force first, then Navy, then Army. The Marines dead last. And whatever you do, go in as an officer.

About a week later, she called him back to tell him she'd enlisted in the Marine Corps. With an open contract. No job guaranteed.

It worked out. Her recruiter kept his promise, and Korrin became a cryptologic linguist, assigned the language she'd wanted since she was a kid obsessed with the Romanovs. After a year at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, where morning PT meant running down to a bay full of seals, she came out fluent in Russian.

Then came the part she'll never be able to fully talk about. Five years of top secret work inside a SCIF, a windowless building where you learn to put everything in boxes. Twelve-hour shifts. Then, five minutes later, picking up Chipotle like anyone else. She described it as living between two worlds every single day.

Underneath all of it was something she'd found back in college, when a professor wove human trafficking into her classes and it grabbed her for good. She couldn't work in that space while holding a top secret clearance, so she studied it instead, taking trafficking courses through Harvard while she was still serving.

She got out at 27. The plan was the FBI or LAPD, something that would put her closer to the work fast. Then a jiu-jitsu practice ended with a completely torn MCL, and those fitness tests were off the table. So she started studying for the LSAT, began volunteering with a trafficking organization, and learned pretty quickly what she didn't want to do in this space.

With a few people she met along the way, she started taking trips to the Dominican Republic and Haiti on their own money, working alongside local governments. Donations followed, then the paperwork, and Lantern Rescue became official. In Haiti, she went on raids with local teams, sometimes riding under a blanket in the back of a truck through gang territory. Some nights she studied for the LSAT by flashlight between stops.

She went on to Penn State Law. Today, by Korrin's count, Lantern has rescued more than 4,500 victims and arrested more than 2,000 traffickers. She also volunteers as a prosecutor in her Pennsylvania county, taking human trafficking and child sexual abuse material cases.

And she's a mom to nine-month-old twins, plus older stepkids. She told me she still compartmentalizes, the same skill she learned in the SCIF. But some things bleed through.

Once, she saw a T-shirt in an abuse image that matched one her stepdaughter owned. She went home and threw it away.

3 Things I Learned About Human Trafficking

Most Victims Know Their Trafficker

Korrin has a whole bit about the viral posts where someone's cousin "almost got trafficked at Target." How did you know? Did they pull off a mask like Scooby-Doo?

It's funny until you hear why it matters. Those stories teach us to watch for the wrong thing. The vast majority of trafficking victims know their trafficker before it starts. Sometimes it's a parent. Sometimes it's someone online claiming a mutual friend. And most victims don't realize they're being trafficked at all.

That's why Korrin says prevention is easier than detection. Talk to kids young and often about healthy relationships and healthy boundaries. Stranger danger still exists. It just lives online now.

Nobody Is Looking for Them

Korrin told me about a woman we're calling Rosa. She was in her 20s in Colombia, raising a son, struggling to find work. She saw young women posting about glamorous resort jobs in the Dominican Republic and asked how to get one. A "recruiter" arranged everything: passport, documents, a round-trip flight. First, though, they told her she needed to lose weight. She did.

Within hours of landing, she was being sex trafficked. The return ticket was fake. Everything they'd paid for became a debt she was told she owed. For four months, her family thought she was at work.

"If every person in trafficking had a missing person poster, my job would be infinitely easier," Korrin told me.

Rosa was one of 83 women rescued in a single raid. She chose to go home to her son, and Lantern's donors later helped her buy the salon where she worked. Her story didn't wrap up neatly after that, which Korrin says is common. Aftercare matters because it has to address the vulnerabilities that led someone into trafficking in the first place. Otherwise, the cycle repeats.

What Helps Is Smaller Than You Think

If you think you're seeing trafficking, Korrin recommends reporting it more than one way.

Call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888, your state police human trafficking tip line, and your local police. The reports eventually converge, so don't worry about reporting twice.

What not to do: don't confront a trafficker, and don't try to put someone in your car. As Korrin put it, that makes you a trafficker. If you can safely talk to someone, do it. Actually see them. Victims often need many attempts before they can leave, so don't assume you were wrong just because nothing changed right away.

And she means it when she says anyone can help. Teachers. Librarians. People who make soap. "It is literally something that not only can everyone do, we need everyone to be doing."

The Bigger Takeaway

The idea I keep coming back to is how Lantern works. Korrin believes that when Westerners fly in, save the day, and take the pictures, they leave a hole when they fly home. So Lantern trains local police, prosecutors, and judges to do the work 365 days a year. And rescue without arrest doesn't solve much. Rescue 20 kids and arrest nobody, and those traffickers find 20 more tomorrow.

I think that applies to more than trafficking. Showing up once feels good. Building something that keeps working after you leave is harder and a lot less photogenic.

There are parts of this episode involving children that I'm not going to write here. I warn you before they come. Korrin sees those cases up close, and she still doesn't sound cynical. Her faith is a big part of that. "The longer you stare into the darkness, the more you become a monster," she said. "So you have to find something to interrupt that cycle."

I don't know what that something is for everyone. I just know I can't un-notice things now. I think that's the point.

Listen, Watch, and Join the Conversation

Korrin's story is heavy. It's also funny, warm, and full of someone who genuinely believes regular people can change things. Listen to the whole thing. Then tell one person what trafficking actually looks like.

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