Made for More | Alison Phillip's Story
Have you ever felt God nudging you to do something that you were 100-percent certain he had mixed you up with someone else? I mean…what can a stay-at-home suburban mom with a pilot’s license do about human trafficking in her community, let alone the entire world?
When God’s involved, all bets are off!
This is the story of how Alison Phillips went from a life of comfort and security to one of uncertainty, adventure and meaning.
Stepping off the hotel elevator, Alison scanned the lobby for Dan, her literal partner against crime. The two of them met while working to fight human trafficking in Missouri two years earlier. Through a series of twists and turns that could only read like a John Grisham novel, Alison and Dan found now themselves in Idaho, preparing to lead the second day of an anti-human trafficking training seminar for local law enforcement.
After a brief morning greeting, two of them exited the hotel into the chilly February Idaho air and walked across the parking lot without saying much of anything to one another. As they approached the rental car, Dan broke the silence. His words sent shivers up Alison’s spine.
“I feel like everything I’ve ever done in my life was preparation for this right here and now.”
The words resonated in every fiber of Alison’s being.
“Yes,” Alison replied. “That is exactly how I feel.”
She suddenly felt so insignificant and small. Why would God choose her be a key national trainer for law enforcement learning about anti-human trafficking? In all honesty, she felt like the most unlikely person on the planet to be involved in such important life-saving work.
Growing up in an idyllic Colorado ski-town, Alison had every good thing provided for her. She attended her college of choice and married the man of her dreams. She even became a commercial airline pilot – a career put on hold when her children came along. Her plans to eventually return to the cockpit, however, took a left turn one day in 2009 when a friend invited her to attend a showing of the film Nefarious: Merchant of Souls by Exodus Cry at Westside Family Church.
The film had a profound – perhaps even supernatural – impact on Alison.
“I remember everything about the evening – where I was sitting, what the room felt like…all of it,” she recalls. “I especially remember as I was watching the film and learning about this horrible thing, I felt like there was a 300-pound weight pressing me into my seat. I knew right then and there that it didn’t matter what my plans were in light of what I had just learned. I knew God was calling me to do something…but what? I mean, I was just a mom in Johnson County. I knew nothing!”
Statistically, in the United States alone, experts estimate between 100,000 and 300,000 children are victims of sex trafficking each day. In Kansas and Missouri, intelligence experts say an estimated 4,000 adult and child victims are trafficked through the states daily.
With her eyes wide open, Alison couldn’t shake the idea that God had armed her with this knowledge for a purpose, and whether she acted or not, she would answer for it someday.
What would she do?
She decided to pray. For clarity. For confirmation. For direction.
As she prayed, the burden grew heavier. At the time, Alison and her husband were in the process of adopting a child from India. As she learned more about orphaned children in that country, she couldn’t ignore staggering statistics about the unconscionable number of children who were trafficked for sex. She grew sick to her stomach, but more resolute that something about this was in her path forward.
She threw herself into researching everything she could about the human trafficking trade. The more she learned, the more she couldn’t turn away. People were suffering. Each time she asked God to do something about it, the answer came back the same: “I created you, now go!”
By 2014 Alison decided to enroll at UMKC to earn a master’s degree in Criminal Justice. That degree led to an adjunct professor position at UMKC. Her reputation grew locally, and by 2020, the Missouri Attorney General’s office was calling with an offer for her to direct the AG’s Human Trafficking Task Force. It was in that role where she met Dan Nash – a Missouri State Trooper. During the next 18 months the two of them built a formidable partnership, making significant progress with anti-human trafficking training and sting operations.
Alison felt great about what they were doing. Women, men and children were being rescued and finding hope and healing. Bad guys were getting arrested and prosecuted. But, as their program grew more successful, other forces were at work against them. Within the bureaucracy were layers of incompetence, apathy and corruption that resulted in the task force leadership becoming re-shuffled to the point that it was no longer effective.
A turning point came when Alison learned about a specific instance where a child who was a suspected trafficking victim was not intervened for. Nobody came. Nobody answered. Nobody rescued and protected that child. She felt disillusionment for the whole system. Disgusted, disoriented and frustrated, she watched everything she and her team worked so hard to build unravel in a matter of weeks. During this time, Dan left the State Patrol after 27 years in law enforcement and Alison knew it was time for her to exit as well.
“I began thinking that maybe that was all I was supposed to do, and it was time for me to move on,” Alison said. She had no idea that what some meant for evil was a holy set up for efforts to rescue victims not just in Missouri, but across the United States and around the world!
While Alison rested and prayed about what was next for her, Dan was certain they weren’t done. They’d done too much great work for this to just end. There were too many people who still needed help.
Several weeks later, the phone rang. It was Dan. Alison hadn’t spoken with him in a while, so it was nice to see his name pop up on the caller id.
“Hey Dan, how have you been?”
“Great! I’m calling because I have an idea that I want to talk to you about.”
“OK…”
“I am going to create a training program for law enforcement officers all over the country, but I can’t do it alone. Would you be interested in collaborating with me?”
Alison said she would pray about it, but she already felt it in her core. The answer would be “yes.” What the enemy attempted to burn to the ground, God was resurrecting out of the ashes for an even greater impact.
By September the two were on their way to their first training seminar in Searcy, Arkansas. At the completion of that training session, an officer approached Alison and Dan.
“I don’t know how to say this,” the officer said between sobs. “I really screwed up. This training really showed me that I’ve missed a lot of opportunities to rescue people.”
“What’s in the past is in the past, but now you know what to look for and how to respond. You can make a difference for the next victim.” Alison replied to the man.
The experience would replay over and over in the coming months. At every training, Dan and Alison had similar conversations with members of the law enforcement communities around the country whose eyes were now wide-open. Each time, the two offered the same encouragement – to use the new information and make a difference for someone else.
A few months later, Dan and Alison found themselves training law enforcement in another midwestern city. This time, they would have a new experience that also would replay again and again as the months went on. Within a few days of the training, Alison received a phone call from a middle school Student Resource Officer (SRO) who attended their training. The morning after the training, a school counselor contacted the officer and asked him to come to her office and meet with a 14-year-old girl.
The SRO immediately began picking up signals that there was more going on than met the eye. As he gently talked with the girl, he learned that her own mother was the trafficker. The call resulted in not just a rescue, but also, the arrests of her mother and the traffickers – something that likely would not have happened had the man not attended the training.
Before the end of the year, the duo trained approximately 700 law enforcement members, and received bookings for more trainings well into the next calendar year. By April 2022, they were on track to train 3,000 officers all over the United States (in 2022 alone), and fielding calls from Interpol to begin training in Europe.
“Only God can do something like that,” Alison reflected. “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t thank God for letting me be involved in this. I’m so glad I said yes.”
If you are interested in learning more about how you can get involved in anti-human trafficking efforts, you can visit humantraffickingtrainingcenter.com. Also, on Thursday, May 5, 2022 Alison and Dan will host a citizen’s academy at Westside Family Church. Click here to register!
