ON NOVEMBER 2, 2016, in a rural neighbourhood north of Redding, Sherri Papini went out for a run and never came home.

It was a 22-day ordeal. A nightmare for her husband and her family, desperate for her return.

As the days wore on, they became convinced Sherri didn’t leave on her own. They were convinced she had been kidnapped. That’s when her husband, Keith, met Cameron Gamble.

“I was asked to sit down with Keith by a woman by the name of Lisa Jeter,” he told FOX40.

Mr Gamble makes his living teaching people how to escape captivity. He recently gave FOX40 exclusive access to his training facility at an undisclosed location in Shasta County, coincidentally, not far from where Mrs Papini was kidnapped.

As the community became gripped by fear, an anonymous donor who believed the kidnapping theory surfaced and offered to put up their own money to see the young mum returned safely. That’s when Mr Gamble, Ms Jeter and Mr Papini hatched an idea so bold, it troubled investigators. Mr Gamble would make a video, a message to Sherri’s kidnappers and offer a ransom for her return.

“I don’t know your motive. I don’t know who you are, where you are going, I don’t care,” Mr Gamble said in the video. “I simply care about getting Sherri back.”

They put a deadline in place — 100 hours from the time the video was posted.

The move was met by silence from Sherri’s abductors and sharp criticism from law enforcement, especially since investigators never said she was kidnapped. Many wondered who Ms Gamble was and what his motivation was for getting involved.

“I was trying to inject a solution to an impossible situation,” Mr Gamble told FOX40.

The deadline for the ransom came and went, so Mr Gamble and the anonymous donor teamed up again to up the ante.

“I asked the anonymous donor, ‘Let’s call all bounty hunters’,” Mr Gamble said. “Let’s make this a very enticing offer.”

Less than 24 hours later, early Thanksgiving morning, the news the entire community had been waiting for had arrived. Sherri was found.

“We are ecstatic to report that Sherri Papini has been found and has been reunited with her family,” Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said at a news conference that afternoon.

Sherri was found 140 miles from home, along Interstate 5 in Yolo County. For her husband, the joy of learning Sherri was alive quickly turned to shock.

“Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see, nor the details of the true hell I was about to hear,” Mr Papini wrote.

She was battered, bruised and bound with restraints. Evidence the last 22 days had been nothing short of horrifying.

“I will confirm the suspects did brand her,” Mr Bosenko said.

Investigators say Sherri’s captors were two Hispanic women who had concealed their faces during the ordeal.

Since her return, many, including Mr Gamble, have speculated that Sherri was kidnapped to be sold into human trafficking and was released after her case attracted national attention.

And while investigators continue to search for her captors, Mr Gamble remains confident he helped from Sherri Papini home.

“It didn’t matter if it was the ice cream man who was making videos, the fact is the message, I believe, is what got her home,” Mr Gamble said.

Mr Gamble calls himself a captivity survival expert. The slogan on his website is, “Where you go is your business. Getting you home is mine.”

He travels the world, negotiating the release of kidnapping victims for desperate families and major corporations. Sherri Papini was not his first case.

In 2015, Mr Gamble negotiated the release of Pastor Cesar Diep, who was kidnapped in Guadalajara, Mexico. He’s helped people in other countries, including Honduras, Kenya and Guatemala.

“You may not have the US government coming to your aid,” Mr Gamble told FOX40. “What you say and what you do could affect your own outcome.”

Since 2010, he has been teaching government employees, humanitarian workers and even missionaries how to survive detainment in foreign countries.

“We don’t just teach how to physically deal with captivity. We teach them how to mentally deal with captivity,” he said.

Mr Gamble served time in the air force, but what makes him most qualified to negotiate someone’s release is that he went through the SERE program.

“I went through this program, the SERE program. Survival, evasion, resistance and escape back in 2002 in the air force,” Mr Gamble said.

SERE is an elite team trained to face any type of survival situation. They learn how to survive behind enemy lines, in the worst moment of their lives.

Every skill Mr Gamble was taught, he now uses at his training facility in Shasta County.

There are four shipping containers, side-by-side, each serving a specific purpose in his survival program.

“When my students are in here, I want them to smell, I want them to see, I want them to feel captivity at the most realistic level,” Mr Gamble told FOX40.

The first so-called “classroom” was cold and dark. Cement covered every inch of the walls. On one side, there was a two-way interrogation mirror. On the other, there were chains. A single light bulb hung in the middle.

“This would be your typical interrogation cell that you would see in a foreign country,” Mr Gamble said.

The next room was more intense than the first. Dirt covered the floor. Jagged pieces of metal and wood were hung haphazardly on the wall.

“This one was replicated after what you might see in the slums of Mexico or the slums of Djibouti,” he said. “In this environment, you might not last as long as the last one. Your priority may be to just get out.”

The first phase of the course is education, learning the motive of the captors.

“Who is in front of me? What does that person or group want and how far will they go to get it?” he said.

If ransom money is what your captors want, Mr Gamble says your goal should be to stay healthy in captivity.

“If their motive is to kill me, then it sets up my priorities to escape,” Mr Gamble said.

In his course, Mr Gamble teaches his clients to work with their environment to get out.

“Can I use something that’s on the ground to shim my handcuffs or rip through my duct tape or my rope?” Mr Gamble said.

Phase two is evasion. Once you’ve escaped captivity, how do you avoid getting captured again?

“We actually train our students to go through the city while they’re being chased by the captors they just escaped from, and walk through and transfer back to an urban environment,” he told FOX40.

For Sherri Papini’s case, Mr Gamble was brought in after she was kidnapped, but his goal and message are always the same — bring people home safe and alive.

“At the end of the day, I did what I did to help out,” Mr Gamble said.

This article originally appeared on Fox 40