SAN JOSE — The woman who reported seeing child-sex texts on another airplane passenger’s smartphone, leading to the freeing Exclusive interview with woman who saw airplane passenger’s child-sex texts, helped rescue kidsof two children in alleged sexual servitude, says she’s no hero. She was just trusting her instincts and her training as an educator.

In her first interview about that July 31 Southwest Airlines flight from Seattle to San Jose, the woman described how she saw the text messages: As the plane descended, she leaned forward to look out the window in the row ahead of her, only to have her view suddenly obstructed by another passenger’s smartphone.

On the screen she saw a text conversation that alarmed her. It was upsetting enough that she discreetly snapped photos of the messages that the man was reading, which were in an unusually large font.

“I don’t know how I saw it, I just saw in big text, ‘child in their underwear,’ ” she said. “I thought, ‘What did I just see?’ My heart started racing. Then I could see more texts coming in.”

The rest happened swiftly: She alerted a flight attendant, who in turn alerted San Jose police airport officers and their specialized sex-crimes unit. The man was detained, and the passenger continued on her vacation in the Bay Area and Northern California.

She would find out days later that her quiet act had freed two Washington kids from an alleged sexual-servitude scheme, and garnered worldwide attention as the kind of vigilance needed in an increasingly connected world.

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“I’m being labeled as a hero. I don’t need a bunch of attention. I’m just so thankful the kids are safe,” she said, asking that her identity not be disclosed out of safety and privacy concerns. “I really just did what I did out of my heart. And being an early-childhood educator, I’m trained to look out for that.”

But San Jose police Detective Nick Jourdenais, a member of the SJPD Internet Crimes Against Children task force who led the ensuing investigation, said the Seattle-area woman’s actions are proof that heroism “comes in all shapes and sizes.”

“Heroic acts aren’t always obvious. She was just a normal person getting on a plane,” Jourdenais said. “She didn’t think she was going to have to intervene in these children’s lives but she saw something, she responded with alertness and quickness, and came up with a plan.”

The man linked to the illicit texts, 56-year-old Tacoma resident Michael Kellar, remains in the Santa Clara County Main Jail. The state Superior Court case against him was dismissed Monday and replaced by federal charges. He is scheduled for arraignment in federal court Tuesday and, barring unusual circumstances, should be transported to Washington within two weeks.

A woman allegedly on the receiving end of those texts, 50-year-old Tacoma resident Gail Burnworth, is in Pierce County Jail on a U.S. Marshals hold. She had been freed Thursday due to a filing lapse and was re-arrested Friday by FBI agents.

Both were charged in federal court in Washington on suspicion of attempted enticement of a minor and conspiring to produce child pornography, according to a filing posted Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington.

Burnworth met Kellar through the online dating site Match.com. Burnworth is accused of offering to carry out sex acts, at Kellar’s request, involving two children ages 5 and 7 with whom she lived, according to the federal complaint.

The complaint lists in sordid detail the texts exchanged between the two defendants leading up to the Southwest flight. Burnworth purportedly told Kellar she had to wait until other adults who lived at the home were not present before they would proceed. Other texts detail the planned sex acts with the children, including rape, and mention the use of Benadryl to sedate the alleged victims.

Special Agent Kyle McNeal states in the complaint that Burnworth told investigators that she had a sexual interest in children, had sexually assaulted or illicitly recorded the children, and “was arranging a time for Kellar to have a sexual encounter” with the victims.

The passenger who reported Kellar was traveling to the Bay Area to visit family and friends. She said she was trying to look out the window of the row in front of her because the window-side traveler in her row had put the shade down. Kellar was sitting next to the window and had reclined his seat, giving her a full view of what was on his smartphone.

“I don’t typically snoop, but I was alerted to that,” she said, initially thinking she was witnessing a child pornography exchange. “Before I knew it, I was reading messages from the the other person saying, ‘I’m going to do these things.’ ”

Then her training as a “guardian of children” — as she and police described it — kicked in.

“My instinct just told me to discreetly take some pictures,” she said. “As he kept obsessively looking at the texts, I just decided to snap pictures of texts he was re-reading.”

But then a wave of nerves washed over her, plus a question: What now?

“I really didn’t know what to do at the moment,” she said. “The flight was ending soon, and a flight attendant was collecting trash.”

The flight attendant saw visible anguish on her face, she said, and checked on her.

“She asked if I was OK, and I told her what I saw, very quietly,” the passenger said. “She said, ‘Hold on,’ and told me I was going to talk with somebody.”

In a statement, Southwest Airlines said the flight attendant’s actions were in line with the company’s practices.

“Southwest is working with local authorities as part of the investigation,” the statement reads. “We always encourage our customers to report suspicious activity to employees or law enforcement.”

San Jose police officers stationed at Mineta San Jose International Airport met her near the gate. They were soon joined by Jourdenais, other ICAC detectives and San Francisco-based FBI agents.

Sources told this news organization that the flight staff slightly delayed Kellar’s de-boarding to give the investigators a chance to view the passenger’s snapshots of his texts. Kellar was detained soon after, and during a police interview apparently freely consented to a search of his phone, asserting that the texts were nothing more than fantasy and role play.

Detectives arrested him, and contacted their ICAC counterparts in Seattle police, who traced the texts to Burnworth and her home in Tacoma. Detectives served search warrants for both that location and Kellar’s home.

The passenger wouldn’t become aware of all this until days later. She left the airport and carried on with her vacation, some of which was out of cell-phone range. A stream of messages from family and friends bombarded her smartphone when she got reception again. Someone sent her a Mercury News story on the case, and her parents recorded some TV news segments.

She says she is not interested in the spotlight, and returned to the theme of the alleged victims finally being safe. But she would be glad for people to follow in her footsteps.

“I’m ultimately thankful (police) were able to act so quickly, and that those children are safe and suffered no more harm. That’s all I can think about,” she said. “It means the world to me and I hope that by my example, somebody who sees something wrong and might not want to say anything will now speak up. One small bit of information may lead to somebody’s freedom and end their suffering.”

Jourdenais, the detective, had no qualms about elevating her given what she helped accomplish.

“This speaks about who she is as a person. She saw something disturbing and was overcome by emotion, but was heads-up and decided to document this. She made sure she talked to officers when she landed, and made sure he was detained,” he said. “This is not an everyday person.”