Garage Folk Noir

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July 2, 2012

Extroverted musicians may command the attention on stage, but it’s the introverted ones that have the lock and key on the earthy, down-tempo songs that resonate inside us and get the gears cranking in our psyches.

Like so many other introverts, Norman native and singer/songwriter Penny Hill was a shy kid – growing up minding her own and keeping quiet in her room – and, like for so many introverts, this was all the ideal makings of an artist.

“It still kind of blows my mind that I can even perform in front of people because of how afraid of the spotlight I was growing up, and still kind of am. The stage is still sometimes a mystery to me,” she explains.

“It’s challenging, to say the least – I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable – not completely, but I’ve learned to hide behind the mic or the lights. I’m still the most comfortable in the darkness of the cave of my own room. I generally spend most of my time on weeknights and stuff just fiddling around in there and finding something to work on.”

“When something sad happens, I’m not the kind of person to go to work and try not to think about it…"

A little haunting, a little garage folk noir, her music is tinged with jazz leanings and takes listeners to the kind of emotional place that we all tend to find ourselves when we really want to simmer in melodramatic melodies.

“When something sad happens, I’m not the kind of person to go to work and try not to think about it, anticipating that it will all be okay. That’s just not me. My personality would say, ‘Call in if you can, stay home, play your saddest records and purge this all out. Hopefully someone else might eventually get something out of this,’” she says.

Hill anticipates releasing a follow up to her first album, Unbutton Your Heart, sometime around the end of the year.

She says performing her music to connect with audiences makes the “super stage fright” she confronts worth it, since sharing her feelings and emotions with other people as a means to relate has always been the biggest part of why she became a songwriter and artist.

“Dropping my boundaries a little bit and sharing that intimate part of myself with other people is a huge part of why I do this, because if I can inspire someone else to let go too and not feel so alone, that really means a lot to me.”

World Class Taste

By

Tara Malone

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July 2, 2012

While there is definitely no shortage of cupcakes and cookies in Oklahoma, many citizens have turned to tempting their palates with something a little more global. With more and more ethnic bakeries setting up shop across the state, diners in search of something more exotic are the getting the opportunity to travel– by taste.

A handful of these eateries have been staples for years, but have seen a surge in popularity with the rise of food culture and television. Ingrid’s Kitchen in Oklahoma City, for example, has long been known to locals as the hot spot for scrumptious German breads and desserts and an impressive brunch buffet. But since the Food Network show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives featured Ingrid’s, foodies from around the nation – and even sometimes the world, according to manager Maggie Miner – come there to experience authentic German cuisine.

Miner shares the passion of locals and travelers alike for the bakery’s wide array of wares. “The bakers still hand-make our bagels, and boil and bake them,” Miner says. “Our Danishes are a real treat in the morning. Then there are our popular thumbprint cookies. I think our brownies are to die for, and the streusel squares are delicious with all that cream cheese.”

Not far away, although perhaps a better-kept secret to Food Network viewers, is Super Cao Nguyen, Oklahoma City’s largest Asian supermarket. Many customers here never make it past the bakery case in the front entrance, where one is hard-pressed to choose between delicacies like the pork meat bun and handmade coconut waffles stuffed with sweet sticky rice. And if your stomach isn’t happily waylaid in the entry, you can have seconds at another bakery and restaurant just inside. Offerings include traditional Vietnamese treats like sesame balls and meat pie stuffed with pork and onions, as well as such French-inspired baked goods as croissants and baguettes.

“Come at 6 a.m. – we are baking. Come at 6 p.m. – we are still baking."

Some members of Oklahoma’s growing Hispanic population have carried the tastes of their former homeland to the new. Originally located in Sahuayo in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, Pancho Anaya bakery has been serving Tulsans for 15 years.

“In my opinion, Pancho Anaya is one-of-a-kind due to our four generations experience,” says Sigrid Katia Anaya, human resources director for the bakery’s operations. “When you come into our bakeries, you become a part of the Pancho Anaya four-generation family tradition.”

Traditional offerings at Pancho Anaya include bolillo, the Mexican white bread used for tortas and desserts; conchas, Mexican sweet bread covered in a chocolate- or vanilla-flavored paste (and the bakery’s most sought-after item, Anaya says); and tres leches cake, made with three different kinds of milk and with a variety of flavors and fillings.

Newer on the scene is Oklahoma City’s La Oaxaqueña. Co-owner Ramiro Padilla says the bakery is set apart from others not only by the 50 varieties of bread and pastries– including baked empanadas with fillings like pineapple and cream cheese– but because at virtually any time of day, something fresh is available.

“We bake bread all day,” he says. “Come at 6 a.m. – we are baking. Come at 6 p.m. – we are still baking. Any time you come, you will always find something coming out of the oven.”

If you’re weary of seeing a cupcake shop on every corner and are craving something off the beaten culinary path, scores of ethnic bakeries throughout Oklahoma will be happy to oblige your appetite with something fresh and authentic.

The Show Must Go On

By

John Wooley

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July 2, 2012

I first met Mike McClure in the latter part of the ‘90s when he was lead vocalist, lead guitarist and primary songwriter for the trailblazing group, The Great Divide. At the time, that band had just become the first of the Stillwater-based Red Dirt acts to sign with a major label, and the group’s affiliation with the powerful Atlantic Records and its publicity arm got the guys into a lot of big country dancehalls – including Tulsa City Limits, one of the clubs on what was known as the “A” country circuit. (Other venues in that group included Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth and the Grizzly Rose in Denver.)

Two kinds of acts played those places. One was a touring headliner with at least one or two hit records. These performers, almost always signed to a record label, would play one 90-minute show on a specific night – usually a weekend – and travel on down the road. The other was referred to as a house band. It could be from out of town, but, lacking major-label clout and national name recognition, it usually was booked for several days in one place, the members churning out three or four sets a night when there wasn’t a headliner, taking the opening spot on the bill when there was, all the while hoping to get noticed by someone connected to a record label and start the climb to stardom.

Tulsa City Limits, like the other big venues on that circuit, had certain criteria for its house acts. Owner Gary Bentley and booking agent Chuck Proctor preferred big, full, bands on stage – four members were minimum, but five or six were much better. They liked for the groups to have an element of showmanship. And they wanted lots of covers of popular country tunes, with no more than one or two original songs per 45-minute set.

In the late ‘90s, the Great Divide wasn’t exactly a house band, but it wasn’t exactly a chart-topping headliner, either, despite landing a couple of songs in the middle part of the national country charts. But when it played the big places like Tulsa City Limits, the Divide simply didn’t act like most other bands, and certainly not like a house act hoping to be a big country radio presence someday. There were only four of them, they weren’t showmen, particularly, and when they did a cover song in their mostly original sets, it was far more likely to come from Van Morrison than George Strait.

“Then I went to Larry Joe Taylor’s, and as soon as I kicked the song off, the whole crowd started singing along. So it actually worked.”

And all of that – as McClure told me in an interview for my 2007 book, From the Blue Devils to Red Dirt: The Colors of Oklahoma Music – was intentional.

“I think the biggest thing we did was coming up with a style of music that was our own,” he said, “and then going into clubs that demanded Top 40 covers and not doing that.”

The reason I delve into this history is to illustrate how McClure has often gone against the grain, or at least against conventional wisdom, in his career. In 2003, he left the popular Great Divide to form his own, more rock ‘n’ roll-oriented, Mike McClure Band (whose early discs carried the slogan, “Twice as loud and half as popular”). And recently, he helped form a new record label, in an era when many observers are declaring CDs dead and the record-company model no longer workable.

“Well,” says McClure. “That’s exactly why I should do it, then.”

In fact, it’s done. The label, 598 Recordings, has already signed four Oklahoma acts, with two discs – one from McClure, the other from the Norman-based Damn Quails – currently on the market.

“A friend of mine, Chance Sparkman, who’s kind of followed my career, wanted to start a label,” explains McClure. “He brought the Damn Quails to me, and I thought, ‘Well, this sounds crazy enough to try.’

“The main problem (with labels) is people will put out a record, spend all their money making the thing and then there’ll be no money left to promote it,” he adds. “Chance agreed to do that, so I agreed to be the face for the label. We got the name because we’re both from Tecumseh, Oklahoma, and 598 is the first three numbers in both our phone prefixes.”

The promotional dollars provided by Sparkman seem to be paying off. “Horseshoe,” the first single from McClure’s new Fifty Billion disc, recently spent several weeks in the Top Five of the Texas Music Chart, which tracks airplay on Americana-style stations in the state.

“We hired a guy out of Amarillo to work the Texas Chart for ‘Horseshoe,’ and when it got up to No. 2, I thought, ‘I really don’t know what that means,’” he says. “Then I went to Larry Joe Taylor’s (Texas Music Festival in Stephenville), and as soon as I kicked the song off, the whole crowd started singing along. So it actually worked.”

In addition to playing Taylor’s prestigious event with his own band – featuring Red Dirt godfather and 598 Recordings artist Tom Skinner on bass and Eric Hansen on drums – McClure also performed there with the other original members of the Great Divide, who reunited after eight years for a much-ballyhooed show in Stillwater this past August.

“My band played one of the main stages, and the next night, I played it with the Great Divide,” McClure recalls. “That was kind of cool.”

Although it’s not literally addressed in his tough and compelling new disc, the healing of the rift between McClure on one side and guitarist Scott Lester, bassist Kelley Green, and drummer J.J. Lester on the other underpins many of the songs on Fifty Billion. When I suggest to McClure that it’s a mid-life record, looking both backward and forward, he agrees.

“It’s just a snapshot of where I’m at now, really – resolving a lot of the past, and looking forward to what’s coming,” he says. “I’m far enough along now to be comfortable in a bunch of different areas of life, from my home life to my music life, and I think that comes out in the writing, maybe subconsciously. Making amends with the Great Divide brought a lot of comfort to me. That was a weight I was carrying around, and I didn’t even realize that I was.”

Following the well-received reunion concert, the Great Divide has played a handful of dates in the Oklahoma and Texas area. The plan, says McClure, is to do a show a month, “which won’t wear everybody out, and keep it fresh for us, too.

“You know, for those years (he and the Divide were split), someone would bring it up at every show I did. Now, I can say, ‘We got back together and we’re playing – so leave me alone,’” he adds with a laugh.

Meanwhile, Fifty Billion continues, justifiably, to attract national as well as regional attention. “Yeah,” he says, “it’s getting out there a little more and a little more. I figure by the time I’m just beat down and almost dead, people will discover me.”

It could be worse, I counter. It might not happen until after his death.

He laughs again. “I’m trying to be optimistic,” he says.

What We're Eating – July 2012

By

Staff

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July 2, 2012

Cookies
Barbee Cookies

Asking one to choose a favorite cookie from Barbee Cookies is like asking a parent to choose a favorite child – you may have one, but it feels like sacrilege to speak of it. With so many flavors and varieties, the cookies each offer something different to the palette. The cinnamon-sugar warmth provided by the Cinnamon Roll Cookie, the airy texture of the sugar cookie, the dense richness of the Barbee Original: a cookie baked with milk chocolate, white chocolate and pecans. Barbee Cookies are known for their plumpness in the middle, creating a cookie that is a balance between a firmer outer texture and light, crumbly center. 8222 E. 103rd St., Suite 136, Tulsa. www.barbeecookies.com

Catfish
Red’s Southern Diner

Does southern home cooking conjure up images of heaping plates of fried okra, mashed potatoes and biscuits served along fried chicken, pot roast or barbecued chicken? If you’re at Red’s Southern Diner, those images are spot-on. This restaurant serves its limited menu family-style: just choose your meat entrée, and leave the rest up to Red’s. Platters mounded with okra, potatoes and biscuits and bowls of creamed corn, gravy and salad, served family style, accompany every entrée. The fried catfish at Red’s – fried light and flaky in a cornmeal batter – is the perfect accompaniment to the other aspects of the meal. 840 W. Danforth, Edmond. www.redssoutherndiner.com

Faves: Stella

By

Jami Mattox

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July 2, 2012

Offering classic Italian specialties like pizza, pasta and steak with modern twists is her gist; after all, she is a most modern girl. Owner Lori Tyler and Chef Jonathan Krell have devised a menu that combines fresh flavors with the stick-to-your-ribs Italian comfort. Favorites like linguini and clams and mushroom and sausage pappardelle appear on the menu alongside pan-seared escolar served over sautéed green beans, arugula and citrus fruit, and the lamb shank, glazed with a mint balsamic reduction and served with an asparagus and spring pea salad. Salads and sandwiches are just as flavorful and are a more popular option for lunch diners at Stella. The House Smoked White Tuna Sandwich served on grilled ciabatta with tomato, greens and lemon herbed aioli is just as decadent as it sounds. 1201 N. Walker, Oklahoma City. www.stellaokc.com

No Horsing Around

By

Brian Schwartz

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July 2, 2012

It’s 4 p.m. In an hour, Stonehorse Café, wildly popular since the day it opened more than a decade ago, will be packed. In the spare yet elegant gray-walled dining room, waitresses scurry about setting up tables. In the kitchen, four sous-chefs, moving like veteran troupers performed a well choreographed dance routine, stir, pound, cut and chop. Next door, in the bakery, an impossibly cramped little room jammed with ovens, racks, mixing bowls – a situation that expansion plans will soon change – is Tim Inman, the owner, chef and driving force behind it all. With a deft and graceful hand, he whisks a creamy, fragrant liquid that will soon become the filling for a key lime pie. Hostesses rush in with last-minute questions; his executive chef squeezes in to go over that night’s menu and Inman never stops stirring. There’s a boyish little smile on his face; he’s having fun.

“The day it stops being fun,” says Inman, “is the day I’ll find something else to do. Why not be happy?” he adds. “I’ve got everything I’ve dreamed of.”

It took hard work to grab those dreams. He tries, he says, to be a better chef each day. Most top chefs don’t bother themselves with dessert; they hire a pastry chef for that. Inman, though, wants to do everything. A few years ago, he spent six months in a Chicago culinary school, learning the fine art of desserts and baking. Most restaurants buy their bread; at Stonehorse it all comes out of the tiny room where Inman is making that key lime pie. Within a year, though, this will change. Inman has acquired a warehouse a mile north on Utica that will hold a vastly expanded bakery and butchery, both devoted to preparing food for the restaurant and its adjacent retail market.

High standards mean vegetables fresh from Bixby and north Texas farms, USDA Prime beef from Chicago, only the best.

Creative, innovative, the menu changes daily. Its rich flamboyant mix of styles is impossible to pin down.

“It’s American food,” says Inman, “with classic technique, and that means French, because France is where it all began. I like French technique because it means high standards. I get all my workers to buy into those high standards; if they don’t, the restaurant will fail.”

High standards mean vegetables fresh from Bixby and north Texas farms, USDA Prime beef from Chicago, only the best. They mean complex, carefully designed dishes such as the pistachio crusted halibut, which appears on nearly every evening menu. It’s served on a bed of shrimp, leeks and tomatoes and surrounded by a thin, broth-like sauce redolent with flavor, the color of lobster bisque with flecks of cream. Those tiny dots of cream, Inman explains, make it cling to the palate and saturate the taste buds, yielding a rich intense taste without a huge infusion of fat. Lunch is a special treat. Unlike almost anywhere else in Tulsa, the lunch menu features entrees as complex and sophisticated as dinnertime, but at much gentler prices.

Next to the restaurant is a magic little shop called Stonehorse Market. Step through the little wooden door and go back 50 years. White-smocked clerks proudly stand behind gleaming cases loaded with two-inch thick juicy pork chops, plump six-pound chickens rubbed with spices ready for the oven, huge shrimp, scallops, lamb. Cases and cases full of delights: layered terrines of creamy cheese and lox begging to be spread on crackers, pillowy quiches (just heat and eat), slab bacon as succulent as country ham, homemade ice cream, huge crusty bread hot from the oven. All this will soon be improved and expanded, though it’s hard to imagine how they can improve upon perfection.

The Lap of Luxury

By

Staff

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July 2, 2012

The term “luxury home” often calls to mind grand homes built with only the finest materials by skilled artisans and filled with expensive décor and rare artworks. The term may also suggest that these homes are stiff, stuffy and not to really be lived in. This is certainly not the case for the four luxury homes profiled in the following pages. Each of the homes was custom built not only to look beautiful, but to also function as a home in which to raise a family. Certainly there’s fine craftsmanship, impeccable design and that extensive art collection; in these homes, however, it would not be uncommon for the art to hang alongside a children’s drawing.

The Ultimate Family Resort

A Blank Slate

Comfort And Elegance

A Hidden Modern Gem

The Crew Chief

By

Jami Mattox

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July 2, 2012

Prosthetist Scott Sabolich is the third-generation owner of Sabolich Prosthetics. An accomplished orthotist, Sabolich hopes to once again show off the latest technology in prosthetics on the world stage at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London. He discusses commitment to patients, advancements in the field and inspirational stories.

When you’re a prosthetist, you create prosthetics for people so they can go about their normal daily lives. That’s what we do, but it’s not what we’re about. We form a bond, a union, with these people, and we take care of them for life. Most patients need a new prosthesis every two to five years. We form a lifelong partnership with our patients.

My grandfather started the business in 1947, after World War II. Back then he made back braces and wooden legs. My dad got into it as a young child, so I grew up in the field. When I was little, everyone else wanted to be a policeman or fighter pilot; well, my dad was a prosthetist, and so that was what I wanted to do.

"…More than 3,000 people in the United States lose a limb every week."

When I went through my residency in the early ‘90s, my passion was in racing. Racing was in my blood. I thought if I wasn’t going to be prosthetist, I was going to be a racer. What really turned me on was racing legs. I thought I can live vicariously through amputees by building racing prosthetics and being their virtual pit crew. In 2000, I picked up a couple Paralympic athletes, and we came back from Sydney with three medals; I also had athletes at the 2004 games in Greece. By the 2008 Beijing games, (Sabolich Prosthetics) had so many athletes that Team USA asked me to come as team prosthetist. In Beijing, Team USA won 48 medals, 10 of which were from this facility, three of which were gold. Team USA also had three world records. We’re hoping to have an even better turnout in London.

People say to me, “Wow, you must see a lot of veterans.” Yes and no. There are about six, seven to 8,000 amputees from the war so far over the last decade, more than 3,000 people in the United States lose a limb every week. If those soldiers hadn’t lost limbs over the past 10 years, those 3,000 people per week wouldn’t have such awesome prosthetics. When soldiers lose a limb, the country rallies around them. From this we get better prostheses, better knees, feet, ankles for everyone like the Genium knee and the Michelangelo hand.

My work with Wayman Tisdale was a powerful thing for me. I grew up watching him play basketball at the University of Oklahoma, and then seeing such a great man like that go through horrible cancer treatments and be able to get him up and going again and see that smile on his face. It’s sad that he’s gone now, but I’m glad we were able to affect his life while he was here.

The Accidental Author

By

Lindsey Johnson

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July 2, 2012

Ally Carter liked to write, and she’d been doing it for years. But it was a hobby to her day job as an agricultural economist – a field in which she holds an advanced degree from an Ivy League college.

“On a lark I thought I’d see if I could get published,” she says.

She did. Her first book, Cheating at Solitaire, hit shelves in 2005, the same year the fifth Harry Potter book was released and the first of the Twilight books was published. Young Adult readers’ thirst was about to be unquenchable. Carter’s literary agent suggested she offer them something.

While watching an episode of Alias, Carter wondered if the main character, CIA agent Sydney Bristow, had gone to a school for spies.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about how awesome that would be,” Carter says.

She created this school, and the Gallagher Girls series was born.

The jump from agricultural economist to spy fiction writer may seem an odd one. Carter, though, says she’s always imagined a deeper hidden story behind everything. Growing up on a farm in Locust Grove, Carter says she would wonder if her room had a secret passage.

“Until I read that, it never occurred to me that people wrote books. Much less people like me."

“My career absolutely started on a farm in Oklahoma where I could let my mind wander,” she says.

Carter, too, had always wanted to write. She was inspired as a young adult by the writing of fellow Oklahoma writer S.E. Hinton after reading The Outsiders.

“Until I read that, it never occurred to me that people wrote books,” she says. “Much less people like me. And teenage me really took hold of that.”

As her books became successful, writing became more of a job and less of a night and weekend hobby. Carter developed a second series, Heist Society. The economist in her ran the numbers and decided she could swap out a second series for her day job. She submitted her resignation at Kansas State where she worked at the extension service. A week later, she was told Gallagher Girls would be on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

“It’s an odd transition. But ultimately nothing is really different,” says Carter, who now calls Tulsa home. “It’s great I get to do what I wanted to do when I was 12 or 13.”

This spring, Carter traveled to promote her latest installment of the Gallagher Girls. The fifth book in the series was released in March, and she’s been in bookstores and libraries talking with readers and signing books.

“It’s nice to be among your people,” she says.

Getting to see and meet readers is what keeps her grounded. She says that readers ask her what it is like to be famous and wonder if she knows anyone famous.

“Really not so much with the famous,” she says. “It’s not a magic wand and ultimately just a job. I’m really, really lucky to have this job,” she says.

Skin Trade

By

Staff

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July 2, 2012

Tortured, stabbed and beheaded, the remains of 19-year-old Carina Saunders ended up in a duffel bag discarded not in Mexico, where such crimes are common, but behind a Homeland Grocery in Bethany, Okla. Of the two men charged with her murder in October 2011, one, Francisco Gomez, was a Mexican national. The other, Jimmy Lee “Big Country” Massey, told police the teenager was killed to send a message to other kidnapped prostitutes controlled by the trafficking ring that they either obey their “owners” or end up dead.

“Anytime you see a headless body,” says Police Detective David Ramer of Chandler, Ariz., “the message is, ‘If you cross us, this is what happens.’” Arizona is a human trafficking corridor from Mexico and Latin America into the United States.

According to the FBI, there are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history. Worldwide estimates are that 27 million men, women and children are in slavery at any given time. Human trafficking, defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery, is a $32 billion industry, second only to drugs as the largest criminal activity in the world.

The U.S. State Department lists America as the number one destination for human trafficking, especially of children. California, New York, Texas and Oklahoma top the list of states most active. After rescuing children from forced prostitution in 40 cities around the nation, FBI agents discovered that nearly each city had harbored exploited children from Oklahoma. An FBI report states that it is well known among truck drivers that if you want good barbecue, go to Kansas City, and if you want young girls, go to Oklahoma City.

“There are 170 countries that buy and sell humans. One is America,” says Mark Elam, who was the guidance behind the 2008 founding of Oklahomans Against Trafficking Humans (O.A.T.H.). “Why such a demand? Sadly, it’s the resale value. You can only sell a kilo of cocaine once. Humans you can sell again and again.”

According to the FBI, there are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history.

Warning Signs
As only one percent of human trafficking crimes are ever reported to police, O.A.T.H. provides a checklist to help identify victims. A person may be a victim if she or he:
– Has few or no personal possessions;
– Does not know the community;
– Is anxious, fearful or depressed;
– Shows signs of malnourishment or physical abuse;
– Lives on the streets or is “sofa-surfing;”
– Is involved in commercial sex;
– Lives with a “boyfriend;”
– Is a runaway;
– Does not control her finances;
– May not speak English;
– Owes debt to boss;
– Probably has no cell phone;
-And is rarely out of view of the trafficker.

O.A.T.H. is endorsed by and works closely with the FBI, Immigration and Customs, the U.S. State Department, U.S. Attorney General’s Office, and with Oklahoma authorities in promoting awareness of and education about what is considered a national crisis. It launched partly as a result of a series of murdered prostitutes who worked out of Oklahoma truck stops. Pilot, Love’s and Travel Center of America are like little cities populated by truckers on the move. Parking lots are known as “Party Row.” That’s where the girls are.

FBI agents and state police of the Innocence Lost Initiative arrested more than 45 pimps and 100 prostitutes at truck stops. “Cindy,” 14, told how she had been bought and sold from one pimp to the other, how when she tried to leave the state her pimp had another girl stab her in her arms and hands.

Forced labor, baby factories and other illicit dealings in human lives account for only 30 percent of human trafficking; the real monster is sex trafficking. Children are a significant portion of the trade. Outreach workers say that of the 1.5 million runaway children in the U.S., some 100,000 will enter the sex trade yearly. The average age of a prostitute is 14-years-old. The average entry age is 12.

Jeannetta Taylor of Sand Springs, who speaks publicly of her ordeal, was coerced into prostitution at 12. By 18, she was working truck stops, the property of a Texas criminal organization. When she tried to escape, her pimp tracked her down, stabbed her 38 times and left her for dead by the side of the road.

“Jules” was beaten with a crowbar when she tried to run away and forced to watch other girls being punished.

“They would chain (a girl) to a bed and have a line of men raping her and beating her and we had to watch and that was a sign to let us know that you didn’t disobey them,” Jules told FOX 23 reporter Abbie Alford in 2010.

Increasingly, human sex trafficking in the U.S. can be traced to the Mexican border and the crime cartels. Arizona has become a freeway for drug smugglers and human traffickers. Lt. Matt Thomas of the Pinal (Ariz.) County Sheriff’s Department says sexual predators in the U.S. order women and girls through the cartels. The cartels in turn send them with a drug run across the desert to be delivered to their new owners.

Pinal County’s Chief Deputy Steve Henry explains that, due to lax federal border enforcement, “what used to be a trickle has turned into a torrent. The violence in Mexico…is here, and it’s not going away.”

Houston is a main port city for human sex trafficking, says Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City), who authored House Bill 2518 in 2010 to help victims of sex trafficking. Oklahoma with its three main major interstate highways – I-35, I-40 and I-44 – provides a pipeline out of Texas running to all ports north, east and west, a crossroads for human trafficking.

“You can only sell a kilo of cocaine once. Humans you can sell again and again.”

Muskogee County Deputy Sheriff Jeff Gragg monitors I-40 at least four or five hours a week, checking for drug and human traffickers.

“Eighty-seven percent of all crimes, including trafficking, are linked to drugs,” he says. “Only three percent of officers nationwide work the highways looking for traffickers. If we worked the roads more, we could make a real dent in both trafficking and other crimes.”

In early 2012, Oklahoma police and federal agents busted a major sex trafficking ring operating out of homes and apartment buildings in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. So far, six Hispanic illegal immigrants have been charged in a conspiracy to recruit, entice and transport Mexican girls for commercial sex acts in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Kansas, Missouri and Florida. One pregnant woman said she was transported from Houston to Tulsa and forced to have sex with more than a dozen men a day under threat of being murdered if she refused.

Authorities in Oklahoma City recovered cell phones, cash, condoms and poker chips in the sting. Poker chips, police explain, are calling cards for Mexican cartels. A “John” buys a poker chip and goes to a secondary location to pick out a girl.

For various reasons, such as fear of deportation and violence, few victims ever voluntarily go to the police. Mary Noble, shelter manager for the Cherokee Nations Youth Shelter in Tahlequah, one of a network of such facilities in Oklahoma that provides temporary emergency care for abused or homeless children, says she rarely encounters victims of trafficking, not because such cases are rare, but because the activity is so tightly controlled by the underworld.

The National Human Trafficking Hotline is affiliated with some 3,000 organizations nationwide that work against the growing flood of trafficking. Media Director Megan Fowler says the hotline has received some 50,000 calls since 2008, few of them from actual victims.

“We have to rely on law enforcement,” she says. “If during a traffic stop, an officer notices a woman or girl is not allowed to speak for herself, that the man controls her ID, that could be an indication of something wrong.”

“I stop a guy with a background and he has young girls with him,” Gragg adds, “I ask the kids things like, ‘Is this your dad?’ If they say no, it requires more investigation.”

Recent statistics reveal that there are 3,160 convictions for sex trafficking worldwide during a typical year. Only one person is convicted for every 800 victims being trafficked.

“Human trafficking is extremely profitable and carries few risks,” says O.A.T.H.’s Mark Elam. “The ones that are driving the market are not dealt with. Only two percent of the pimps and Johns are ever arrested.”

While O.A.T.H. stresses awareness, other national organizations take a more proactive approach. Kendis Harris, executive director of Colorado-based Truckers Against Trafficking, which was launched by Harris’ mother Lyn Thompson in 2011, says truckers are the nation’s eyes and ears. As part of its ministry, Truckers Against Trafficking uses big rigs as blinds and employs film crews in undercover surveillance of truck stops where juveniles are often forced into prostitution against their will.

“Our goal is to mobilize truckers and people working truck stops to be aware of forced prostitution of women and children,” Harris explains, “and take an active part in fighting it.”

Oklahoma, with its three main major interstate highways – I-35, I-40, and I-44 – provides a pipeline out of Texas running to all ports north, east and west, a crossroads for human trafficking.

Human sex trafficking involves more than truck stops, seedy apartments and crime cartels. It includes other forms of sexual exploitation as well, such as pornography.

Agent-in-charge Steve Tanner of the OSBI Internet Crimes Against Children Unit, which began operations in 2007, deals primarily with child porn and works about 200 cases a year. Social networking sites, he stresses, provide opportunities for predators to prey on and manipulate children.
“Predators become ‘friends’ with their intended victims and wait for the right moment to entice them out of the house. Child porn trafficking is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Child molestation and child pornography typically go together –as child porn is child molestation. A part of society that believes sex with children is not wrong.”

“One-third of 30 million children online will leave home at some point to meet someone they do not know but meet online,” says Kern.

Eric Yarborough, Assistant District Attorney of Oklahoma’s Third Judicial District in Mangum, Okla., sees another form of sexual trafficking as particularly chilling because it involves family members as exploiters. Mothers will encourage their juvenile daughters to get pregnant in order to collect more government assistance checks. One 16-year-old already had three children, the oldest of which was 5.

“It’s a form of pimping, of exploitation and trafficking, of your own kids.”

After a 30-year-old man was charged for the statutory rape of an 11-year-old girl, who became pregnant, the family of the victim protested his arrest.

“He’s a good man,” the girl’s mother insisted. “She wanted it.”

Her mother was drawing welfare on her daughter and new granddaughter.

A mother and daughter, both addicts, were caught shoplifting. Authorities learned the mother routinely drove her 16-year-old to Texas to pimp her out for extra money.

“The first thing that goes is the maternal instinct when a woman gets hooked on (drugs),” Yarborough says. “They will sell themselves or their children to get more. A lot of statutory rapes go unreported.”

Elam agrees. “A family member who becomes the pimp – mom, dad, brother, husband, uncle – can start the victim as young as 3 or 4 years old. Most of the time they are drug-dependent.”

Elam, named FBI’s Citizen of The Year in 2011 for his work against human trafficking, believes a number of social factors contribute to Oklahoma’s being near the top of the scale in child trafficking. Among these, he says, is the fact that Oklahoma leads the nation in the incarceration of females. Kids without mothers are six times more apt to follow the dark side than other children.

He points out further that in the United States, Oklahoma is ranked No. 2 in teen pregnancies and homeless children, No. 3 in divorce and No. 4 in women murdered by their husbands. The state is ranked No. 46 in per capita income, No. 49 in education and is considered the third hardest place in North America for a girl to grow up. These factors create a vulnerable population for human trafficking and other crimes.

Organizations against human trafficking, children’s shelters and law enforcement agencies cannot win the battle alone. Elam emphasizes the point that it will take a general awareness of the public throughout the nation and the world and the intervention of the law-abiding public. Nothing short of a coordinated alliance among organizations, law enforcement and citizens can stop 12-year-old girls from hooking at truck stops and teens like Carina Saunders from ending up beheaded in duffel bags.

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