24-year-old lily samad had lost all hope. working up to 22 hours a day for a demanding diplomat and his family, lily says her employers even made her work when she had debilitating fevers. penniless because the family refused to pay her, she lived a life of desperate isolation and growing depression. she is my everything. back in indonesia, lily s husband heard nothing from his wife for three long years. he feared that she was dead. who can i call somebody here? i don t know. because she don t have phone number, didn t give me a number. it s really hard. no communication with her. finally in 2006, lily reached a breaking point. the diplomat s wife who insisted lily wash the car, even in the rain accused the obedient lily of shirking her duties.
in the morning, 2:00 in the morning, 18 hours of work, seven days a week. no holiday, no days off, no ability to go anywhere, visit her parents, nothing. and then after a while, she told me she was never paid. and i thought what a strange thing. for many, it s hard to understand why lily didn t just run away. but cindy liou says it s important to see the situation from lily s perspective. in the beginning, it doesn t register it s necessarily really fishy. they think oh, this is normal, this is what s expected. in fact, she had a good experience working as an international nanny. at 15 she left indonesia is work for a diplomat in saudi arabia. the family treated her well, paying for her vacation time, taking her with her to europe and teaching her arabic and french. so when she received an offer to work for another diplomat, she leaped at the chance.
home would often see lily when she went to pick up the mail. once in a while, she would be there and she would see me standing there getting my mail. she would fly over and start talking to me. and she had this beaming expression on her face as if she was so happy to be talking to another human being. even though lily didn t initially convey any distress, heidi slowly began to have concerns about the welfare of the harried young woman. it was always clear to me she did not have much time to chat. she would say i have to go now, i must go now. so she would run back. almost like she was afraid someone would see her. meanwhile, lily began to confide in heidi, one brief conversation at a time. heidi gradually peaced together the ugly and unrelenting reality of lily s daily life. she had to work from morning till night, midnight till 1:00
the dip mat and her family. i opened the door and there was lily. i was crying. i said please help me. of course then i realized now what am i going to do with her? what can i do? coming up, the good neighbor helps lily find her freedom. companies have to invest in making things. infrastructure, construction, production. we need it now more than ever. chevron s putting more than $8 billion dollars back in the u.s. economy this year. in pipes, cement, steel, jobs, energy. we need to get the wheels turning. i m proud of that. making real things. for real. .that make a real difference. you walk into a conventional mattress store, it s really not about you. they say, well, if you wanted a firm bed you can lie on one of those. we provide the exact individualization that your body needs. welcome to the sleep number store s biggest sale of the year.
prosecuted for criminal activity. as incredible as it sounds, some diplomats have gotten away with rape and murder in the united states. a lot of these diplomats are powerful people in the country that they re from. so unless you can secure the safety of those family members in their country first, there s a lot of maneuvering to be done without just slapping down a criminal case. unsure how to proceed, heidi and her family agreed to hide lily. i was very nervous. in fact, there were many nights that i lost a lot of sleep because i thought oh, my heavens, what s going on happen. for months they lived as if trapped in a surreal spy novel. lily stayed hidden for days at a time. occasionally heidi would sneak