Dawn Rucinski

Dawn Rucinski's main focus as an abolitionist has been to combat human trafficking in the United States by mentoring and inspiring task forces in Las Vegas, Reno and Chico. Dawn has shown through these contributions that one person truly can make a difference. In Chico, California Dawn successfully established the first “Abolish Slavery” Day via diligent and passionate work with the Mayor and local government. Dawn helped galvanize the police into forming task force meetings, and in doing so, inspired the city into backing its civic leaders and law enforcement community. At the end of the day Chico had a unified voice pursuing human traffickers and saying, “NO” to slavery.

If that wasn’t enough Dawn was also able to escalate Federal support for task forces in Nevada by bringing in the FBI to work with both the Las Vegas and Reno Police Departments.

Most people don’t realize that the majority of the human trafficking cases in the United States involve runaway minors. Dawn has made this particular area the primary emphasis of her human rights activism. The success of her campaigns show that when real people come together in a combined force we can truly can make great strides to abolish slavery.