A mother, Nicole Perez was at a mom-to-mom sale last weekend when she picked up a pack of underwear decorated with “Disney Fairies” for her daughter.
However, upon opening the pack, she discovered more than just undergarments. Wrapped inside the plastic was also a hidden message that read “Help me, plz,” with the name “MayAnn,” a location, and a telephone number.
“I was terrified,” Nicole tells ABC 7. “I just felt like everything just dropped to my stomach.”
The underwear was packaged in a factory located in the Philippines owned by an American manufacturing company, Handcraft.
Nicole said she quickly sent an email explaining that she had found a note in a package of their underwear to the manufacturer, who offered an apology and a new pack of underwear.
However, Nicole wasn’t worried about the undergarments, she was worried about the person who was trying to convey a potentially “desperate” plea for help.
No one could be reached at the telephone number written on the cardboard.
“You’re wondering if this is forced labor, if they’re just working long hours, they’re putting these underwear together and clearly someone is reaching out for help and so you think about your own kids and you hope that this isn’t the case,” Nicole says.
Unfortunately, Rebecca Tungol, president of the Philippine American Cultural Center of Michigan, say that most people in the Philippines use prepaid cellphones, which are untraceable, and because the package of underwear was second-hand, its hard to tell when the note was written exactly.
Handcraft on the other hand said the message could have been old since the batch number on the pack of underwear was at least 2 years old.
In order to help officials gauge whether the S.O.S message was legitimate or not, Nicole has sent the package, along with the note, back to Handcraft headquarters, so they could find the tracking number and date the package was made.
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