NASHVILLE, TN— Aerial Recovery, a highly sophisticated non-profit group of military veterans, law enforcement, and first responders highlighted in a recent Washington Examiner exclusive, is an international disaster response organization staffed by veterans on a healing journey who have found purpose in missions of their own choice.
Some perform disaster relief missions, others are part of an anti-human trafficking task force that has worked with foreign governments under Memoranda of Understanding to act as Force Multipliers, and enable local authorities as they once did in the U.S. Special Forces.
As reported by the Examiner, Aerial Recovery was recently instrumental in assisting Peruvian authorities in apprehending violent Tren de Aragua (TdA) terrorists, breaking up a human trafficking ring in the capital city of Lima.
Britnie Turner, CEO and Co-Founder of Aerial Recovery, said that women and young girls victimized by TdA and rescued from eight locations throughout the city, “were lured under false pretenses, stripped of their freedom, and told that escape meant death.”
She added, “This operation demonstrates what is possible when governments and nonprofits work in lockstep to dismantle evil and rescue the vulnerable.”
In an exclusive interview with Law Enforcement Today on Friday, Turner, explained the origin of the non-profit that has as a startup non-profit already rescued over 8,400 people from disasters both natural and man-made, including human trafficking.
“We take people that are transitioning out of the military, law enforcement or first responder community and we take them through a one year healing program and on the other side of that, after they've done the work on themselves, we then asked them if they want to to come serve with us globally, Turner told LET. "And even just knowing that that opportunity to continue to serve is on the other side. It's such a motivator for them to know: ‘The world still needs me.’ ‘I still have purpose, and it's worth doing the work on myself.’ Because it does make these servant-hearted people, it makes their hearts beat to get to do this work.
And so we have some incredibly effective operators because again, they've done the work on themselves first, and nobody's perfect. Everybody's going to be on their healing journey for the rest of like. We all are, but to at least deal with those demons versus drink them away is a critical piece for our operators to be able to go into the darkest places on the planet and stop evil in the way that we are.”
Turner added that she envisioned her mission to stop human trafficking at the young age of 12, after watching a documentary on it that she said “woke me up,” and “rocked my world.” She added that she “recognized that I could have been that little girl in the movie. She looks like me, and I recognize that the sheer blessing of my life to not be in that living hell.”
Initially, she purchased a property to build into a healing center, saying, “Literally, God told me to buy a piece of property and turn it into a healing Center for people,” only for the facility she bought with her entrepreneurial gains to be wiped out by a hurricane.
But this setback would lead to her meeting her husband, a 20-year veteran and Special Forces Operator, Aerial Recovery’s co-founder and COO, Jeremy Locke.
“He’s a 20-year veteran — 10 of those years as a Green Beret Special Forces — and so he has over $10 million for government training in him,” Turner told the Examiner. “We can come and help, we have people who have the heart to help you with this specific issue. And we will offer you everything from the current best practices on how to handle survivors when you rescue them, to how to do a raid, to how to find [perpetrators].”
“I then started my nonprofit to go help people after disasters because I realized in going through a major hurricane, some are not effective. Some of the groups that were showing up. Weren’t. That sounds mean, but I'm just telling you the gap I saw, and that's what entrepreneurs do. We see the gap and we find ways to fix it, and so I started my nonprofit, and flash forward met my… who is now my husband. Jeremy Locke and he was 20 years in the army. Ten of those in the special forces," She continued to tell LET.
"And so, he came to a second disaster with me. He didn't realize you could go serve in those things. He was still on active duty. He came out with me and was just so Dang good. And I was like, wow. Do you think your friends? Would want to do this as well. I mean, his army friends, and he said. Oh, yeah.”
“So we collaborated and came up with the concept of changing my nonprofit into being something that veterans are leading, and we're plugging veterans into these disaster zones and human trafficking efforts.”
As her Turner and Locke went on missions together, she noticed, “One, there is no one more effective than. Our military, first responders, and law enforcement community repurposed into these spaces. There's hands down, nobody more effective.” And secondly, that “when he went and got out of the military. He really struggled, and it was crazy to me, as someone who loved him, to watch somebody you love suffer like that with the thought that their purpose and their world was over just because they're not part of this big organization anymore. But the military is, and so we created a program called Heal Heroes.”
Through the program, Aerial Recovery can help veterans, law enforcement, and first responders along their healing journey and provide them with a purpose.
The group responds to natural disasters and human trafficking, and as Britnie explained, “we're on our way to being one of the most effective anti-trafficking orgs in the world. And I would say we are in our space, I mean anti trafficking has so many. It's a complex issue that requires a complex solution. And our piece of that solution many times is focused on the rescue piece. We do the prevention and aftercare as well.
But we have the operators that come through our program, and our operators are not scared to go do the very dangerous work that rescue has as a piece of that. And so we have been requested by a different governments so far throughout Latin America to come in and be their right hand in the fight against trafficking. So, I've got… we've got an MOU with the country of Peru, Honduras… places in Argentina, and certain states within Mexico. We have several more that have requested us to fly in and sign MOUs with them.
And we're establishing a cross-border collaboration for these countries to be able to not only learn best practices, but work together to dismantle these trafficking networks that are found within all of them. And then eventually our if they're not already. Funneling into the United States. And so it's actually. Security for America. For us to be doing this work throughout Latin America as well.”
Turner highlighted a recent rescue of a 16-year-old Ecuadorian girl and a 4-year-old boy by the Peru National Police Human Smuggling Division with assistance from Aerial Recovery. “The week before, we rescued a 16-year-old and a four-year-old. Same country. And that was because this girl's been missing for a year. So, this operation, Teddy bear, this girl's been missing for a year and finally escaped to a place she could call her mother."
"Our team... we have teams, full-time teams in Ecuador and Peru, and the Ecuadorian team was able to get a hold of our team in Peru. Which were able to find her. It was a miracle on this, this sweet little girl who had been sold in brothels dozens of times a day is now safe and, on her way, back to her Mama, and her mom sent me a video yesterday just following her. It's of, like, thanking us for finding her daughter,[who] has been missing. Can you imagine your child missing for a year and then finding out she's been sold in brothels over and over again?"
"Like horrible. And so we call it Operation Teddy bear because on her way out of this, essentially like a prison that she's been held in with the four-year-old, and we're still discovering his story, we weren't even looking for him. He happened to be with her, she's holding this big pink teddy bear and just clutching it because it seemed to be the only thing that was giving her some kind of like, peace throughout this living hell."
"And so you know. We have saved hundreds of people, but I cried like that the whole day after we rescued her, and they sent me this picture of her wrapped up in this Aerial Recovery blanket, and I just cried because, you know. God put this seed in my heart at 12, and I worked my whole life to be able to do this work.”
Some perform disaster relief missions, others are part of an anti-human trafficking task force that has worked with foreign governments under Memoranda of Understanding to act as Force Multipliers, and enable local authorities as they once did in the U.S. Special Forces.
As reported by the Examiner, Aerial Recovery was recently instrumental in assisting Peruvian authorities in apprehending violent Tren de Aragua (TdA) terrorists, breaking up a human trafficking ring in the capital city of Lima.
Britnie Turner, CEO and Co-Founder of Aerial Recovery, said that women and young girls victimized by TdA and rescued from eight locations throughout the city, “were lured under false pretenses, stripped of their freedom, and told that escape meant death.”
She added, “This operation demonstrates what is possible when governments and nonprofits work in lockstep to dismantle evil and rescue the vulnerable.”
In an exclusive interview with Law Enforcement Today on Friday, Turner, explained the origin of the non-profit that has as a startup non-profit already rescued over 8,400 people from disasters both natural and man-made, including human trafficking.
“We take people that are transitioning out of the military, law enforcement or first responder community and we take them through a one year healing program and on the other side of that, after they've done the work on themselves, we then asked them if they want to to come serve with us globally, Turner told LET. "And even just knowing that that opportunity to continue to serve is on the other side. It's such a motivator for them to know: ‘The world still needs me.’ ‘I still have purpose, and it's worth doing the work on myself.’ Because it does make these servant-hearted people, it makes their hearts beat to get to do this work.
And so we have some incredibly effective operators because again, they've done the work on themselves first, and nobody's perfect. Everybody's going to be on their healing journey for the rest of like. We all are, but to at least deal with those demons versus drink them away is a critical piece for our operators to be able to go into the darkest places on the planet and stop evil in the way that we are.”
Turner added that she envisioned her mission to stop human trafficking at the young age of 12, after watching a documentary on it that she said “woke me up,” and “rocked my world.” She added that she “recognized that I could have been that little girl in the movie. She looks like me, and I recognize that the sheer blessing of my life to not be in that living hell.”
Initially, she purchased a property to build into a healing center, saying, “Literally, God told me to buy a piece of property and turn it into a healing Center for people,” only for the facility she bought with her entrepreneurial gains to be wiped out by a hurricane.
But this setback would lead to her meeting her husband, a 20-year veteran and Special Forces Operator, Aerial Recovery’s co-founder and COO, Jeremy Locke.
“He’s a 20-year veteran — 10 of those years as a Green Beret Special Forces — and so he has over $10 million for government training in him,” Turner told the Examiner. “We can come and help, we have people who have the heart to help you with this specific issue. And we will offer you everything from the current best practices on how to handle survivors when you rescue them, to how to do a raid, to how to find [perpetrators].”
“I then started my nonprofit to go help people after disasters because I realized in going through a major hurricane, some are not effective. Some of the groups that were showing up. Weren’t. That sounds mean, but I'm just telling you the gap I saw, and that's what entrepreneurs do. We see the gap and we find ways to fix it, and so I started my nonprofit, and flash forward met my… who is now my husband. Jeremy Locke and he was 20 years in the army. Ten of those in the special forces," She continued to tell LET.
"And so, he came to a second disaster with me. He didn't realize you could go serve in those things. He was still on active duty. He came out with me and was just so Dang good. And I was like, wow. Do you think your friends? Would want to do this as well. I mean, his army friends, and he said. Oh, yeah.”
“So we collaborated and came up with the concept of changing my nonprofit into being something that veterans are leading, and we're plugging veterans into these disaster zones and human trafficking efforts.”
As her Turner and Locke went on missions together, she noticed, “One, there is no one more effective than. Our military, first responders, and law enforcement community repurposed into these spaces. There's hands down, nobody more effective.” And secondly, that “when he went and got out of the military. He really struggled, and it was crazy to me, as someone who loved him, to watch somebody you love suffer like that with the thought that their purpose and their world was over just because they're not part of this big organization anymore. But the military is, and so we created a program called Heal Heroes.”
Through the program, Aerial Recovery can help veterans, law enforcement, and first responders along their healing journey and provide them with a purpose.
The group responds to natural disasters and human trafficking, and as Britnie explained, “we're on our way to being one of the most effective anti-trafficking orgs in the world. And I would say we are in our space, I mean anti trafficking has so many. It's a complex issue that requires a complex solution. And our piece of that solution many times is focused on the rescue piece. We do the prevention and aftercare as well.
But we have the operators that come through our program, and our operators are not scared to go do the very dangerous work that rescue has as a piece of that. And so we have been requested by a different governments so far throughout Latin America to come in and be their right hand in the fight against trafficking. So, I've got… we've got an MOU with the country of Peru, Honduras… places in Argentina, and certain states within Mexico. We have several more that have requested us to fly in and sign MOUs with them.
And we're establishing a cross-border collaboration for these countries to be able to not only learn best practices, but work together to dismantle these trafficking networks that are found within all of them. And then eventually our if they're not already. Funneling into the United States. And so it's actually. Security for America. For us to be doing this work throughout Latin America as well.”
🚨 OPERATION TEDDY BEAR: CHILDREN RESCUED FROM TRAFFICKING IN PERU - In the early hours of May 30, 2025, Aerial Recovery, in joint operation with the Peru National Police Human Smuggling Division, rescued a 16-year-old Ecuadorian girl and a second child between 4–5 years old. pic.twitter.com/YgV097i0HN
— Aerial Recovery (@aerial_recovery) May 31, 2025
Turner highlighted a recent rescue of a 16-year-old Ecuadorian girl and a 4-year-old boy by the Peru National Police Human Smuggling Division with assistance from Aerial Recovery. “The week before, we rescued a 16-year-old and a four-year-old. Same country. And that was because this girl's been missing for a year. So, this operation, Teddy bear, this girl's been missing for a year and finally escaped to a place she could call her mother."
"Our team... we have teams, full-time teams in Ecuador and Peru, and the Ecuadorian team was able to get a hold of our team in Peru. Which were able to find her. It was a miracle on this, this sweet little girl who had been sold in brothels dozens of times a day is now safe and, on her way, back to her Mama, and her mom sent me a video yesterday just following her. It's of, like, thanking us for finding her daughter,[who] has been missing. Can you imagine your child missing for a year and then finding out she's been sold in brothels over and over again?"
"Like horrible. And so we call it Operation Teddy bear because on her way out of this, essentially like a prison that she's been held in with the four-year-old, and we're still discovering his story, we weren't even looking for him. He happened to be with her, she's holding this big pink teddy bear and just clutching it because it seemed to be the only thing that was giving her some kind of like, peace throughout this living hell."
"And so you know. We have saved hundreds of people, but I cried like that the whole day after we rescued her, and they sent me this picture of her wrapped up in this Aerial Recovery blanket, and I just cried because, you know. God put this seed in my heart at 12, and I worked my whole life to be able to do this work.”
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