uring the holiday season, it is common to be inundated with commercials that tug on your heartstrings. Images of children hoping for a cure and animals shivering in the cold cause lumps in your throat and a heaviness in your heart. So many needs to be met, all of which deserve your attention.

But what about the needs that are rarely discussed? The ones that are even more difficult to learn about. The ones that cause anger to swell up and grief to overwhelm you. The ones that don’t just tug at your heartstrings but have an all-out tug-of-war with them.

In November, attendees of the Louisianna Self Storage Association’s 2023 Fall Conference and Expo began to cross the hallway of the Baton Rouge Crowne Plaza from the trade show floor to the banquet hall, where they would attend a StorageGives fundraising auction and dinner reception. By now, most self-storage industry professionals are well aware of the philanthropic opportunities that StorageGives presents. They have heard about the donations that have been made to charities like Autism Speaks, Homes for Our Troops, and many others, through the efforts of StorageGives.

But no one expected what came next.

As Lonnie Bickford, founder of StorageGives, took the stage to introduce the charity selected to benefit from the night’s auction, he began to choke on his words. Quickly wiping the tears from his eyes, he ushered a fiery, curly-haired redhead with matching red lips to the stage and handed her the microphone. Her presence quickly grabbed everyone’s attention. The laughter and side conversations subsided within her first sentence.

She meant business. She was a change agent.

“She” was Alliece Cole, former investigator for the Department of Family and Children’s Services, FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award winner, and founder of the Sparrow Foundation—the night’s recipient of the charity auction that would soon take place. For the next 30-plus minutes, she would delicately, but clearly and passionately, educate the guests on the often-undiscussed world of sex trafficking and its victims.

“When Lonnie and I talked about me speaking at the event, he originally asked for five or 10 minutes,” Cole said. “I went over to Lonnie and Jackie’s [Lonnie’s wife] house to plan for the event, and by the time I was done there, they are like looking at me and he goes, ‘OK, probably 20 minutes.’”

When Cole arrived at the event that Tuesday, Bickford encouraged her to take as much time as she needed to educate the audience on the Sparrow Foundation and its mission to end sex trafficking. “He said, just do whatever you gotta do,” Cole said of Bickford. And she did just that.

That evening, with just a few handfuls of auction items, $40,000 was raised to benefit the Sparrow Foundation, a foundation that takes care of victims like Dani, an autistic girl who began being trafficked after her mother passed away, providing her with safety, resources, and a new outfit to wear when she starred in a PBS special about the foundation, and a 14-year-old girl who had been sent to a mental facility after being labeled a sex-worker. “When I first met her, she was talking about needing snacks, T-shirts, and shorts,” Cole said. The girl ran track, but her traffickers would periodically take that from her as a tool to control her. “I asked her to give me her snack list, and she put her head down and started crying. I was like, ‘What’s going on? Why are you crying?’”

Cole said the young girl turned to her and said, “Why are you so nice?” Through her tears, Cole replied, “This is not nice. This is appropriate.” After a short time of building trust with the victim, the victim enthusiastically shared the entire organization chart for the sex trafficking ring she had been captured by.

Because funds at the Sparrow Foundation were low at the time, Cole reached into her own pocket to buy the snacks. She knew that somehow the money would show up to meet the needs of these victims. “StorageGives’ donation that night means that now, StorageGives gets to be a part of these moments. They get to do things to help my team continue doing what they do and to empower me to continue to go out and help sex trafficking victims,” Cole said with tears in her eyes.

That young 14-year-old will never return to her family again. She has nowhere to go for Christmas or Thanksgiving. “So, the night before Thanksgiving,” Cole explained, “we drove up to North Louisiana to see two girls who were in a group home and would not be able to go anywhere.” The night before, Cole asked her great-niece to make two Thanksgiving cards for the girls. She stayed up all night but was so disappointed that she was unable to finish coloring them in. “Both of the girls were so excited that they had something to color,” Cole said. “They said, ‘I have something to do today!’”

With the $40,000 donation from the auction, StorageGives gets to be a part of these, and many other, special moments. Cole has story after story of girls and boys who, at very early ages, were trafficked, and how the Sparrow Foundation, and now StorageGives, has made a difference in their lives. Many of these heart-wrenching stories can be found on their website, thesparrow.foundation, and their social media platforms. Dani’s PBS special can also be found on their website.

While the statistics on sex trafficking are staggering, Cole tends to steer away from quoting them. “They study the data, write papers about them, give opinions on them,” Cole said. “They form organizations, but no one is hands-on like we are. I have data, but I also have the stories. I can tell you that the average age of victims is between 10 and 12 for girls, and for boys, eight and 10,” she said. “But the youngest I’ve ever met with was an infant. I can give you the national and state statistics, or I can tell you my stories.”

And the stories have found her. From an early age, Cole was always drawn to people in need. It’s no wonder that she has worked for the Department of Family and Children’s Services, Joyce Myers’ Ministry, and Operation Blessing, where she first met Bickford, who was cooking for Kartina volunteers. Cole was never looking to solve the human trafficking epidemic. “I was looking for the hurting,” she said.

Not everyone has the time or resources to be the boots on the ground like Cole, but everyone can contribute because every donation counts. As Bickford says, “A lot of a little adds up.” Information about partnering with the Sparrow Foundation and StorageGives can be found on their websites, thesparrow.foundation and storagegives.org.