Flight attendant offers more than coffee or tea

It happened in 2011. Stewardess Shelia Fedrick was working an Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to San Francisco when she noticed something odd. A very well-dressed man had the aisle seat in row 10. Next to him, a disheveled teenage age girl sat by the window. "She looked like she'd been through pure hell," Fedrick remembers. When Fedrick attempted to chat with the man, he was defensive, and the girl, who appeared to be 14 or 15, said nothing. Later in the flight, Fedrick was able to whisper to the girl to use the bathroom, where she'd left a note for her on the mirror. The girl used the note to write "I need help."

Fedrick immediately informed the pilot about the situation, and he contacted the San Francisco tower. When the plane taxied to a stop, police officers were waiting at the exit gate and arrested the man. Fedrick says she wrote her own phone number on the note in the bathroom, "and I guess she memorized it, because a few weeks later she called me." The two have kept in touch since then, and the former victim is now attending college.