Meet the Longhorns Cycling the Coast to Combat Sex Trafficking

By Eliza Pillsbury in Features, Sept | Oct 2024 on September 1, 2024 at 1:17 am | No Comments

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 “Sweet Disposition” by The Temper Trap, she emerged from her tent to rouse others camping alongside a babbling brook off 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 cycling trip from Seattle to San Diego to raise money and awareness for domestic sex trafficking. But the journey started long before that morning.

Pedal the Pacific (often affectionately shortened to “Pedal”) began eight years ago in a coffee shop in Dallas as three friends procrastinated on job applications. Savannah Lovelace, BA ’17; Grace Pfeffer, BBA ’17; and Sara Belmer (who attended the University of Arkansas) were in their senior year of college—all with different majors, but a shared 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 happens when one person is controlled through violence, deception, or coercion in situations of commercial sex, forced labor, or domestic servitude.” The friends had recently learned firsthand about trafficking on the international level and were eager to discuss its implications: Lovelace was completing a capstone project about labor trafficking in East Africa, while Pfeffer and Belmer had just returned from volunteering in communities impacted by trafficking in Thailand and the Dominican Republic, respectively.  

The girls felt an urge to do something big to cap off their college experience. The cause came to them first: “We realized that so many of our friends and family that we would talk about sex trafficking to would immediately shut down or feel awkward,” Lovelace says. “It’s a subject that I think people feel they’re supposed to know about because it’s such a buzzword. And there’s still a taboo about it, so people don’t dig in and ask questions.”  

Domestic sex trafficking, too, is an especially challenging issue in Texas. A landmark 2017 study out of the School of Social Work found that there are more than 300,000 victims of human trafficking in the state, including an estimated 79,000 minors and youth victims of sex trafficking.   

“Houston is the city in the U.S. with the highest reported number of sex trafficking cases,” Hornung adds. “When I learned that statistic, it was like a wake-up call for me because I never thought that the place I call home—the place where my loved ones live, where I’ve always felt pretty safe—would be such a hot spot for this really awful crime.”

Back in the coffee shop, Lovelace and Belmer were furiously Googling. First, they were inspired by a man who rode his bike from Oregon to Patagonia—but it took him two years, and they were looking for something to accomplish in a summer. Then, they discovered maps made by the American Cycling Association, including a 1,700-mile route down the Pacific Coast.   

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

“We started saying we were ‘hilariously un-athletic girls,’ and that really caught people’s attention,” says Lovelace, whose extracurriculars in high school were choir and piano. “I think at first people followed along because they didn’t know if we would be okay!”  

Their initial fundraising goal was $10,000, almost exclusively through low-dollar donations from friends and family via Venmo, the popular mobile payment app. Then a donor recommended they increase their goal to $20,000—and offered to match them 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 to put a roof over their heads (about a third of the time) and camped the other nights. Panniers, 80-pound bags that straddle the rear wheel, carried their supplies.   

By the time they reached San Diego, their coffee-shop idea had netted more than $60,000—six times the original goal.  

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

When they returned from the ride—remarkably, in one piece—they published a form to gauge how many others might apply 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 non-binary or gender nonconforming individuals) ages 18 to 23 and brought on 11 riders for the second annual ride. “We called them ‘the guinea pig year,’” Lovelace laughs. At that point, she had also started work 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.   

“Having worked on the issue of sexual exploitation for 23 years, I find it’s still really hard for people to talk about,” Newman says. “One thing that we love about Pedal is—man, they’re shouting it from the rooftops! They get out there, and they start 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 the only full-time paid employee. She relies heavily on the Leadership Team, comprised of six ride alumnae who volunteer for a one-year term and coordinate everything from gear to sponsorships. And in 2023, Pedal reached a stunning $1 million raised.   

In addition to supporting NCMEC, 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 through, it’s an attention-grabber,” Lovelace says. “But we also want there to be a local presence so that the community can continue to get involved after we roll out.”

In July 2024, the eighth annual Pedal ride was midway down the PCH. Hornung managed to post daily updates to her cycling Instagram account, which had lain dormant since 2022 when she participated in Texas 4000 for Cancer, a student organization at The University of Texas that makes the world’s longest annual charity bike ride from Austin to Alaska.  

“This morning, we all woke up in pain and tired,” she wrote on day 19. “While it is exciting that we made it to California (finally!) and the pictures are very cute, today actually really sucked.” The team’s resilience shines through even in these short dispatches, complete with silly selfies and ironic emoji usage. Hornung ended the same post with, “Today was rough, but tomorrow is a new day!”  

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

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

On a crackly phone call from Northern California, Aguilar sounded tired, but cheerful. “The ride has been really hard. I want to say the Austin hills prepared me a little bit, but it’s just such a different beast,” she says. “There’s nothing that can prepare you for being on the coast.” Before biking into every town, too, the team must call ahead asking local establishments to donate meals or groceries to be cooked around a camping grill. 

Beyond the physical struggle, Aguilar spoke about the challenge of staying present. “When I’m on a ride, sometimes I’m just thinking about the hills or what I’m going to do the next day,” she says. “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 impacted by trafficking—it really helps motivate me.”

Another motivation for both Longhorns is their future careers in health care—and their plans before entering medical school. On Sept. 9, just six weeks after the end of the ride, Hornung will depart for her two-year commitment to the Peace Corps, working as a health professional in Peru. Aguilar headed to Honduras in August, where she is working as a clinic assistant at a home for vulnerable children.  

“Eighty percent of victims will access health care while in the life—we refer to ‘the life’ as being in a trafficking situation—but most medical professionals receive no formal training about trauma-informed care or how to identify trafficking situations,” Hornung says. “I feel more than 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, if not in the exact same manner. It will be really helpful to have knowledge about trauma and exploitation and be able to apply that to working with children who also have trauma.”  

Lovelace notes that trafficking is an issue that intersects with so many other areas of activism and professional experience. Pedal alumnae have gone on to law school, 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 archway of paper garlands and gold tassels, to the cheers (and tears) of their family and friends. After letting their bikes drop to the ground, Hornung, Aguilar, and their teammates embraced each other 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 pictures, and raced, hand in hand, into the Pacific Ocean.

“The good work they’re doing to combat sex trafficking is the main part. But watching these riders find themselves and their voices and empowerment, that is super special to me, too,” Newman says. “I get to see them before and after, and they are changed women.”

Visit pedalthepacficic.org to donate or apply.

CREDITS: From top, Sydney Gawlik, BS ’18 (2); courtesy of Gracie Hornung; Gawlik (2); courtesy of Hornung; courtesy of Livia Sumner; Gawlik (2)