Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

If you've been following The Dallas Morning News' riveting series about Yolanda Méndez Torres, you would probably never think to label the young woman lucky.

She was only 11 the first time her 38-year-old uncle, Juan García Aguilar, raped her. Soon after, he took her as his other woman alongside his wife, Efigenia. Juan beat both into silence and submission.

Reporters Stella Chávez and Paul Meyer and photographer Lara Solt retraced Yolanda's journey from her dirt-poor village in Mexico to the blueberry fields and motel rooms in the South and finally to Dallas, where she lived in a closet and, at age 17, gave birth to a girl.

Somehow under these unimaginable hardships,Yolanda, now 19, endured. She and her daughter are safe, and her rapist sits in jail.

Yolanda's life was probably saved by one simple act of kindness: César Santana didn't look the other way. He went to the motel room where Yolanda's uncle kept her locked up and starving, and handed her a calling card to reach his wife, Cristina.

Because of the Santanas, Yolanda had a place to go that afternoon when she finally found the courage to leave her abuser. She found another angel in Susana Loera, a Mexican Consulate employee, who not only helped Yolanda fight for justice but also took her and her baby in as her own.

Yolanda's story makes a point that too often we forget in our day-to-day hustle and bustle: What can one person do? A lot. Laws and studies alone won't stop the violence against women. It will take all of us reaching out to perfect strangers – like César, Cristina and Susana did – to help set the Yolandas of this world free.