It was a sharp-eyed woman in south Orange County who helped deliver Shari Ho, a native of Taiwan given to a wealthy family when she was 7, from miserable servitude to a life of her own.

Tarhata Salem, a native of the Philippines who signed on as a contract nanny for a Middle Eastern couple who then refused to pay or free her, escaped to safety in Costa Mesa after frantically approaching strangers in the street in 2011.

The kindness of strangers often plays an oversized role in resolving tragedies involving workers held against their will, though the identity of the “liberator” may remain a mystery. But someone notices something odd: A young girl living in the shadows. Never going outside. No school. No friends. No space cleared for the soft trappings of childhood.

So that tipster alerts police, and the machinery of American justice rumbles to life.

The stories of Salem and Ho echo that of Shyima Hall, plucked as a 12-year-old from the Irvine garage where Abdel Nasser Youssef Ibrahim and his wife kept her when she wasn’t cooking, cleaning and serving them and their five children.

Hall’s impoverished parents had given her to the wealthy couple back in Egypt when Shyima was just 8 and reaped $30 a month from her dawn-to-dusk labor. An anonymous tipster led police to their door in 2002.

That was the first modern slavery case unmasked in upscale Orange County, but it was not the last.

Dozens of labor trafficking victims surface here every year: There were 78 reported cases in 2012 and 2013 – 58 women and 20 men. Most were lured from overseas with temporary work visas and promises of good pay and working conditions, only to arrive and discover the opposite, said Priscilla Santos, program coordinator for the Anti-Trafficking Services Program at The Salvation Army Orange County.

HOUSEKEEPERS

They serve as domestics, hotel housekeepers, maintenance workers, personal caregivers, restaurant staffers, construction, farm and factory workers, even door-to-door salespeople. Often right under the noses of people like you and me.

“For so many years, nobody said, ‘That is just a child. No, this is not right,’” said Ho, tears glistening as she recalled a decade of servitude. “People think, ‘It’s not my business. I don’t want to get involved.’

“If people think more like, ‘It is my business, it is my problem, that looks like my child,’ I would have gotten out sooner and faster.”

Poverty is the soil in which modern slavery thrives.

Ho remembers life in a mountainous village in Taiwan, where she was one of 10 children. Her father was rarely around. There wasn’t enough food to keep bellies from aching. They couldn’t afford school, and when kids got sick, there were no trips to the doctor. But she remembers gazing down the mountain at the ocean, and she remembers her mother cooking an amazing “last meal” when she was 7.

“Your older sister works very hard in the city, that’s why we have this chicken today,” she recalls her mother saying of the feast.

Then, it was Ho’s turn. Her parents took her to the home of a wealthy family in Taipei where she, too, would work very hard. They promised they’d be back for her. But they never came.

The wealthy family had five children. Ho became their maid, cook and servant. At 7, she was so small she couldn’t even reach the sink to wash dishes, so she would often drop and break them. Each shattered plate was punished with a beating.

Ho was never given a plate of her own, but ate whatever scraps the family left.

Ho doesn’t know how much money her parents were paid for her work.

“How much pain, how much hate inside of me,” she said.

FALLING BEHIND

The backdrop was similar for Salem. At 18 she married a farmer and quickly had five children. The crop income couldn’t keep pace with the growing family’s demands, so Salem resolved to sign up with an employment agency in Manila that would place her overseas.

She signed a two-year contract in 2010 to work as a nanny in the United Arab Emirates for $200 a month – enough to sustain her family and save a little.

It was agonizing to leave – her baby was only 6 months old and still nursing. “But I need to do it for the family, to help my husband,” she said.

Salem was picked up at the Abu Dhabi airport and taken to a stately three-story home surrounded by security walls with locked gates. Her passport was taken for safe keeping. The family spoke only Arabic – Salem, Tagalog – and helping the lady of the house care for her five children soon morphed into shouldering a crushing load of cooking, cleaning and laundry.

“Even the pajamas you have to iron,” she said.

Work stretched from dawn until the early morning hours the next day, and Salem was never paid. Her employers said she’d get her money at the conclusion of her two-year contract. When she protested to her employment agency, she was told “you never paid us our fee,” and it refused to help her.

LONGING TO ESCAPE

Salem, too, was always tired, always hungry, only eating what the family left behind. She despaired.

“I tell my children I leave to make money, and then they have nothing – no money, no mother,” she said. She longed to escape, but the gates were always locked, and she was never allowed out alone.

These are common scenarios for domestic servitude, officials and activists say. Victims must usually work long hours for little to no pay, and their employers exert such physical or psychological control – including debt bondage – that the victims believe they have no choice but to continue working, according to the Polaris Project, which runs the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline.

Employers use violence, lies, threats against family members back home and other forms of coercion to keep victims under control.

For both Ho and Salem, a shot at freedom came after the families they served came to Orange County.

Salem had been with the UAE family for about 18 months, had learned a good bit of Arabic, and kept her head covered, as the family was religiously observant. Her employers floated the idea of extending her contact for another two years.

“She asked me, ‘You love my children?’ and I say, ‘They are like my own,’” Salem said. “I lie. I say I will come back.”

Salem had accompanied the family to Saudi Arabia on one vacation to care for the children, and she came on their trip to California in 2011 to do the same. The family rented a house in the South Coast Metro area – with a pool – and as they traversed the sunny suburban streets, Salem felt the shackles loosen. She kept thinking, “Now. Now is the time. I must escape.”

‘THEY WILL KILL ME’

She seized the opportunity to slip away at a Chuck E. Cheese. It was night. She asked the oldest child to keep an eye on the younger ones while she went to the bathroom. Instead, she rushed outside to a security guard – but the language barrier proved impossible to breach, and the man said, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

Salem was terrified. “What if they see me outside?” she said. “They will kill me.”

Frantic, heart pounding, she tore off to a nearby bus stop, where two young women were waiting. Language again proved a problem, but the women found two private security guards who again tried to untangle what was going on. They took her to a McDonald’s, and eventually, Salem reached a Tagalog interpreter from the National Human Trafficking Hotline. Costa Mesa police were summoned to the McDonalds, and The Salvation Army took her to a shelter, where she could finally breathe again.

“They tell me, ‘Take a shower. Eat. Sleep.’ And I say, ‘Thank you so very much. Now I am saved,’” Salem said.

Ho’s deliverance was no less dramatic.

After the family moved from Taiwan to Orange County in 2002, a business associate of that family noticed that, though clearly a teenager, Ho spent many hours working. Without making a fuss, the woman pressed a piece of paper into Ho’s hand and said, “Call if you need anything.”

GETAWAY CAR

The paper had a phone number on it. It took Ho nearly a year to get up the courage to call, but she finally did.

They made plans for an escape. Ho was only allowed to leave the house alone on Thursday evenings, when she dragged garbage bins to the street for trash pickup on Friday mornings.

The woman promised to meet her in front of the house for a getaway at 7:30 p.m. the next Thursday evening.

“I was so nervous,” Ho said. “If I get caught, I’m in big, big trouble.”

Heart pounding, Ho began to take the garbage bins to the street as per usual. The woman’s car was waiting. “I run. I just run,” Ho said.

The woman took Ho back to her house and called police. When Ho saw the officer she fell to her knees and grabbed his legs. “Please, don’t make me go back,’” she said.

Both Salem and Ho fell into a safety net woven by the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force in the wake of Shyima Hall’s ordeal.

As foreign nationals, they entered The Salvation Army Orange County’s program for survivors, which helps victims take back their lives and chart a course of their own choosing.

Rather than just get on a plane back to the Philippines, Salem asked if she could stay.

“I tell my children I leave to make money,” she said. “Please, one year in the United States to make money before I go back.” So The Salvation Army helped her get a visa and one better: It arranged for her entire family to join her in America.

Salem’s husband and five children, aged 5 to 14, arrived one year ago. She has taken English and computer classes, put together a resume and works as a housekeeper at a hotel by John Wayne Airport. The family who enslaved her fled the country as soon as they realized Salem was gone.

Ho had more challenges. Having never gone to school, she couldn’t read or write in her native language, much less in English. But she worked hard, took classes and learned. In 2006 she got her first real job – caring for children. She will never forget the amazement of getting her first real paycheck.

‘SORRY’

Ho and the family who enslaved her reached a confidential settlement that provided some compensation. In 2011, she returned to Taiwan. She wanted to see her mother again. Her mother said “sorry,” and that was pretty much it.

Orange County is home now. Ho cares for three infants and loves her work, hopes to start a foundation to help other victims and write a book. Both she and Salem are official graduates of The Salvation Army’s survivor program and continue to meet regularly with its survivors’ support group.

“I try to forgive,” Ho said. “But it is very, very hard.”

Contact the writer: tsforza@ocregister.com