Meet the Longhorns Biking the Coast to Fight Sex Trafficking

By Eliza Pillsbury in
Features, Sept | Oct 2024 on
September 1, 2024 at 1:17 am |

Somewhere along the Pacific Coast Highway, just north of the Oregon-California border, Gracie Hornung snoozed her alarm. Four times.

The fifth time she heard the opening notes of The Temper Trap’s “Sweet Disposition,” she emerged from her tent to wake others camped along a babbling brook near the PCH. Hornung, BSA ’24, and six other women made up the 2024 Pedal the Pacific team. They were beginning day 19 of their seven-week bike ride from Seattle to San Diego to raise money and awareness for domestic sex trafficking. But the journey began long before that morning.

Pedal the Pacific (often affectionately shortened to “Pedal”) began eight years ago in a Dallas coffee shop when three friends deferred their job applications. Savannah Lovelace, BA ’17; Grace Pfeffer, BBA ’17; and Sara Belmer (who was attending the University of Arkansas) were in their senior years of college, all majoring in different fields but sharing an interest in the issue of sex trafficking.

According to the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin, “human trafficking occurs when a single person is controlled through force, deception, or coercion into situations of commercial sex, forced labor, or domestic servitude.” The friends had recently learned firsthand about human trafficking internationally and were eager to discuss its implications: Lovelace was finishing a project on human trafficking in East Africa, while Pfeffer and Belmer had just returned from volunteering in communities affected by human trafficking in Thailand and the Dominican Republic, respectively.

The girls felt compelled to do something big to bring closure to their college experience. The case came to them first: “We realized that so many of our friends and family members that we talked to about sex trafficking were immediately shut down or uncomfortable,” Lovelace says. “It’s a topic that I think people feel like they need to know about because it’s such a buzzword. And it’s still taboo, so people don’t look into it or ask questions.”

Domestic sex trafficking is also a particularly challenging problem in Texas. A groundbreaking 2017 study from the School of Social Work found that there are more than 300,000 human trafficking victims in the state, including an estimated 79,000 minors and youth sex trafficking victims.

“Houston is the city in the United States with the highest number of reported cases of sex trafficking,” Hornung added. “When I heard that statistic, it was a wake-up call for me because I never would have imagined that the place I call home — the place where my loved ones live, where I’ve always felt reasonably safe — would be such a hot spot for this really horrible crime.”

Back at the coffee shop, Lovelace and Belmer were busy Googling. First they were inspired by a guy who rode his bike from Oregon to Patagonia, but it took him two years and they were looking for something to do in the summer. Then they discovered maps from the American Cycling Association, including a 1,700-mile route along the Pacific coast.

This seemed somehow feasible, and the three friends went for it. After Lovelace and Belmer came up with the name together, Pfeffer (the marketing major in the group) acquired the website domain and Instagram name. They quickly shared their plan online so that others would hold them accountable.

“We started saying we were ‘hilariously unathletic girls,’ and that really caught people’s attention,” says Lovelace, whose extracurricular activities in high school included choir and piano. “I think people followed us at first because they didn’t know if we would do well!”

Their original fundraising goal was $10,000, almost exclusively through donations from friends and family via Venmo, the popular mobile payment app. Then a donor suggested they increase their goal to $20,000, and offered to match it up to that amount.

By the time they flew to Seattle with just four months of self-guided training, they had surpassed $40,000. Along the way, the new cyclists found hosts who put a roof over their heads (about a third of the time) and camped the other nights. Panniers, 80-pound bags slung over the rear wheel, carried their supplies.

By the time they arrived in San Diego, their coffee shop idea had raised more than $60,000, six times their original goal.

“We had no intention of becoming a nonprofit. We thought it was a one-time thing,” Lovelace says. “But when we were in Southern California, we got an email from someone asking where they could sign up for next year’s team.”

When they returned from the ride—remarkably in one piece—they posted a form to gauge how many others would sign up if they continued the effort. Eighty-nine women and men of all ages responded with interest.

The trio narrowed the demographic requirements to girls (and nonbinary or gender nonconforming people) ages 18 to 23 and brought 11 riders for the second annual ride. “We called them ‘the guinea pig year,’” Lovelace laughs. At the time, she had also started working as a development coordinator for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where she met Jennifer Newman, now the executive director of NCMEC’s Texas office.

“I’ve been working on the issue of sexual exploitation for 23 years, and I still find it hard to talk about,” Newman says. “What we love about Pedal is, man, they’re shouting it from the rooftops! They’re going out there and starting those conversations.”

NCMEC is now Pedal’s primary beneficiary. In 2020, Pedal the Pacific officially registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and Lovelace is now its only full-time paid employee. She relies heavily on the Leadership Team, a group of six former participants who volunteer for a year, coordinating everything from equipment to sponsorship. And in 2023, Pedal raised a whopping $1 million.

In addition to NCMEC’s support, Pedal has introduced annual microgrants of $5,000 to a community partner in each state along the route: Washington, Oregon and California. “When Pedal comes along, it’s an attention-grabber,” Lovelace says. “But we also want to have a local presence so the community can stay involved after we roll out.”

In July 2024, the eighth annual Pedal Ride crossed the PCH halfway point. Hornung managed to post daily updates on her cycling Instagram account, which had been inactive since 2022 when she participated in Texas 4000 for Cancer, a student organization at the University of Texas that creates the world’s longest annual charity bike ride from Austin to Alaska.

“We all woke up this morning feeling sore and tired,” she wrote on Day 19. “While it’s exciting that we finally made it to California and the pictures are adorable, today really sucked.” The team’s resilience shines through even in these short posts, complete with silly selfies and tongue-in-cheek emoji use. Hornung concluded the same post with, “Today was rough but tomorrow is a new day!”

Chloe Aguilar, one of Hornung’s teammates and also a 2024 UT graduate, heard about Pedal through a friend at UT who rode on the 2022 team.

“I hadn’t had a bike since I was about 7 years old, so people in my life were really curious about why I was doing this,” says Aguilar, BA, BS ’24. “That gave them the opportunity to say, ‘Wow, this must be a really important goal for Chloe, because I know she doesn’t like riding a bike!’”

During a crackling phone call from Northern California, Aguilar sounded tired but cheerful. “The ride was really tough. I want to say the hills of Austin prepared me a little bit, but it’s just a whole different animal,” she says. “There’s nothing that can prepare you for being on the coast.” Before they ride into each town, the team also has to call ahead to ask local establishments to donate meals or groceries that will be cooked on a camping grill.

Beyond the physical struggle, Aguilar spoke of the challenge of staying in the moment. “Sometimes when I’m on a ride, all I think about is the hills or what I’m going to do the next day,” she said. “I really have to think back to, Why did I choose to do this with my summer? “The interaction we have with different organizations and people affected by human trafficking motivates me enormously.”

Another motivation for both Longhorns is their future careers in health care, and their plans before they go to medical school. On September 9, just six weeks after the end of the ride, Hornung will leave for her two-year commitment with the Peace Corps, where she will work as a health professional in Peru. Aguilar left for Honduras in August, where she works as a nursing assistant in a home for vulnerable children.

“Eighty percent of victims access health care while they’re in life — we refer to ‘life’ as being in a trafficking situation — but most medical professionals don’t receive formal training in trauma-informed care or how to identify trafficking situations,” Hornung says. “I feel more ready and willing to advocate for education on this topic because I’ve seen and heard how important the medical field can be in intervening.”

Aguilar adds: “Exploitation happens everywhere, even if it’s not in exactly the same way. It will be very useful to have knowledge about trauma and exploitation and to be able to apply that when working with children who also have trauma.”

Lovelace notes that human trafficking is an issue that intersects with so many other areas of activism and professional experience. Pedal alumni have gone on to law schools, the Texas Attorney General’s office, social work, other nonprofits, and more.

For Hornung and Aguilar, however, the immediate goal was the finish line. It was a sunny day in San Diego on July 27 when the seven-person team pedaled through an arch of paper streamers and gold tassels, to the cheers (and tears) of their family and friends. After dropping their bikes to the ground, Hornung, Aguilar and their teammates hugged before greeting their supporters. The “small but mighty” group, in Lovelace’s words, had raised $86,770.47 for NCMEC and this year’s community grant recipients. To celebrate, the women sprayed champagne, posed for photos and raced hand in hand into the Pacific Ocean.

“The great work they do to combat sex trafficking is the most important thing. But seeing these riders find themselves, their voices, their empowerment is also really special to me,” Newman says. “I see them before and after, and they are changed women.”

Visit pedalthepacficic.org to donate or submit a request.

CREDITS: Top to bottom, Sydney Gawlik, BS ’18 (2); courtesy of Gracie Hornung; Gawlik (2); courtesy of Hornung; courtesy of Livia Sumner; Gawlik (2)