In 1993, I was deployed as one of a few CIA Ground Branch operators into Mogadishu Somalia during the civil war (Operation Restore Hope). Most people remember that region of the world from an incident known as Black Hawk Down. On a given day after skirting a number of burning tire roadblocks and stone tossing locals on our drive back from the U.S. Embassy, we spotted two young girls dressed in green t-shirts, blue jeans and aviator glasses hiding out under some debris just adjacent to a French Foreign Legion base. Given the exponential growth of violence and clan activity, these two girls were sure to be collateral damage by the next day, not unlike the plethora of dead bodies curbside on the streets of Mogadishu. Life was of little value in the eyes of most civilians caught up in the clan fighting.

For just a brief moment, each of us wondered if we should intervene but since it was not part of our mission the team headed back to the safehouse to resume operations. Strangely while our minds should have been more mission focused, throughout the evening discussions kept coming back full circle to those two little girls. It festered in the heart and mind of each of us. But no matter how much it ate at us, our hands were tied because rescuing children was not our mission, we had nowhere to take them even if we did rescue them and we could not bring them back to the safehouse. Add to the equation any misfortune of finding ourselves in a gunfight, the team would be raked over the coals by both the CIA and the U.S. Army for such a move…thus making the liability too great and potentially too high profile from clandestine operators.

It looked as if we had no solutions for this problem and so I excused myself to the top of our safehouse where the African sky was blanketed in what seemed like a billion stars. I looked up to heaven and asked God, ”why aren’t you doing something about this…this war, the starvation, these children?” And then out of thin air a voice said ”I did… I created you.” It was a voice outside of my head. I felt my legs buckle beneath me as my entire being was forced face down in the presences of God’s omnipotent power. It was earth shattering to my soul and I feared for just a moment that if I were to gaze up, I would see the Almighty standing in front of me. What seemed like minutes was probably only seconds but as I lifted my face from the ground and stood, I looked around thinking that perhaps the voice I heard was from a teammate…but there was no one there. My experience was real and no one can convince me otherwise.

I moved back down a flight of stairs to the ops room where our team assembled. We had most of our technical gear set up, in anticipation of that evening’s intel briefing by Rich. All of 15 minutes and we were finished and had our marching orders for the next day but as Rich started to leave the room he stopped at the door entrance and said, ”you know there is this crazy lady from New York who just opened an orphanage here in the war zone.” The room grew silent as we all looked at one another, realizing we now had a place to take these two little girls. Within the hour we all agreed that it was the right thing to do. By sunrise we grabbed our battle gear and went back into the city to do just that…rescue these girls. As we rolled up to the French Foreign Legion base, our hearts sunk because the girls were no where to be found. Security was tight but never tight enough to just sit in one place for too long and so we started to leave. As we started to drive away, we looked back one last time and there they were, cautiously peering at us from behind debris. We stopped the vehicles and motioned for them to come our way. Slowly they responded until finally reaching our position. If my memory serves me right, our translator Ebrahim spoke with them to discover they were the children of an Italian man. It was safe to assume from what Ebrahim told us that the Italian had this family in Somalia and one back in Italy and when the war got hot, he abandoned the girls here in Mogadishu.

With the utmost security in mind, off to the orphanage we went but only to be turned away by the American worker because they had close to 210 war orphans in the compound and did not have enough food for the ones in their custody. So, the Centre Spike boys struck up a deal. “if we can feed all of these kids for the next month or so, will you take these two girls?” The American worker agreed to do so. As we were departing the youngest of the rescued girls clung to the leg of one of the Centre Spike guys begging us to go out and now find her mother and little brother. It was hard to say no and over the course of the next four days that is exactly what happened. We found the mother and the younger brother in a refugee camp and reunited them with the girls at the orphanage.

When I returned to the U.S. the thought of children in need weighed heavy on my heart. I had lived my entire life assuming that most children in America grew up just as I had…nice family, nice school, loved by friends, etc. But as I inquired with my local, state and federal law enforcement partners I discovered that there were 250,000 American children reported missing in 1993. “What did missing mean” I asked. “they are just missing, runaways” was the answer I got. I wasn’t satisfied with their answer and I did not let it rest. I dug deep to find out what wasn’t being talked about…child sex trafficking, child pornography, organ harvesting and child labor. So, why wasn’t the law enforcement community in American doing something about this? In all fairness, most departments had budgetary constraints, there were communications challenges state to state, most officers received no training on child sex trafficking and the department priority of work was on more tangible crimes such as homicides, car theft, terrorism, fraud, etc. the things they could show quick results from in order to justify the yearly budget from the city, state or federal officials. I heard every excuse in the book as I made my rounds from one agency to another. And still no one could explain to me why our children in America were NOT a priority.

I’ve never been one to procrastinate so I took it upon myself, unbeknownst to the CIA, once again to do the right thing and go rescue another child the first holiday I got in 1993 and every other holiday for the next three years to do more of the same. By 1996 it became clear to me that there was something bigger than overthrowing small governments. I had the opportunity that few would ever have, to use every piece of tradecraft acquired in the Clandestine Service to save missing, exploited and sex trafficked American children and secure the future of our Republic. If my nation trusted me to successfully run special operations in the most dangerous parts of the world for ten years, surely rescuing children in the darkest of those parts was something I could do better than most. And so, ARC began with the understanding that saving one child may not change the world but for that one child their entire world will change.

To Rich, Bud, Dan, Jake the Snake and our Marine Corps Rat Patrol thank you for doing the right thing. What you helped set in motion has saved more children than you will ever know.

Semper Fi & In His Service