Results: Superheroes Really Do Exist! (Part 1)

One of those someones is Tim Ballard—a doting husband, loving father of nine, and former agent with the Department of Homeland Security who has dedicated his life to saving children from slavery. Do you know anyone who has worked to put a stop to human trafficking/child sex slavery?

Ballard is the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, a non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to take down child sex trafficking operations and rescue children from their grasp. Originally trained in counterterrorism and weapons, Ballard entered the trafficking world when he was asked to help start the Department of Homeland Security's child crimes unit in the mid-2000s. In that role, he had to learn to go undercover as a sex tourist—to convince traffickers that he wanted to buy children. Does the thought of child sex trafficking make you sick?

As a father of six kids at the time, Ballard found the work traumatic, but also necessary. "I learned how to basically be just horrible things," he says. "I learned how to act like a pedophile or talk like a trafficker or a purveyor of child sex tourism—whatever I needed to do. Then I started to infiltrate different organizations in horrible places in Mexico and Colombia." Do you appreciate the men and women who do sometimes horrible things to protect us from the unimaginable?

Ballard worked doing anti-trafficking operations for the government until he began to realize that he could help more kids on his own. In his DHS position, he was limited by U.S. jurisdiction. If he started his own operation, he would not be bound by such restrictions. Do you think it was ingenious and brave of Tim Ballard to step out on his own to be a more effective rescuer of child sex trafficking?

In 2013, Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) began. Ballard put together a team of people from the CIA, DHS, and state and local law enforcement, many of whom walked away from pensions and job security to work for his non-profit. Currently OUR has about 25 full-time people working around the world and about 100 contractors—folks from law enforcement and military backgrounds who form their "jump team" that responds to calls to action around the globe. If you had the opportunity, would you be willing to work on a team to help rescue children from sex-trafficking (even if it was in an office tracking down leads or making contacts online)?