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Lisa Mercer, a design teacher at the University of North Texas, developed an app to help report suspected cases of human trafficking. It's called Operation Compass.

Human trafficking happens everywhere, but it's a crime that is hidden in plain sight.

"I think it would be hard not to find a location in our area that didn't have some form of human trafficking," said Lisa Mercer, a design teacher at the University of North Texas.

For her graduate thesis, Mercer developed an app to help report suspected cases of human trafficking. It's called Operation Compass.

"To me, it's like a way home. You can use a compass to get home," Mercer explained. "I think that community members can be a survivor's compass."

After the story aired Thursday night, NBC 5's Noelle Walker hosted a Facebook Live chat with a human trafficking victim. That Facebook Live chat can be seen below.

When Mercer first started her project, she admits, she knew very little about human trafficking.

"I thought, 'Oh, I'll just create this app and survivors can push a button and law enforcement can swoop in and save the day,'" Mercer laughed. "I was no naive."

Her advisors had a suggestion.

"Before you get started on that amazing app, you may want to consider doing some research," Mercer recalled them saying.

Mercer found out Texas is second only to California in the United States for the number of human trafficking cases.

"I was so surprised," Mercer said. "I had this idea that is was girls being locked away places, and that's not always the case. It can be quiet often someone we sit next to at a coffee shop, or walk down the street, and we just don't know it."

"What about the house next door?" asked Tonya Stafford, a human trafficking survivor. "I was in the house next door. Looks just like your house, my house, and everybody passed us up."

Stafford said she was trafficked in 1988, when she was just 13-years old.

"You know that little girl was there, and then all of a sudden she's not there. That's what happened to me," Stafford explained. "My mom was a drug addict and she sold me for drug money to a man who was 26 years old, and he kept me. He kept me."

Service agencies that help trafficking survivors and law enforcement said very often people miss the signs of trafficking.

"I think it's extremely hidden," said Dallas Deputy Police Chief Vernon Hale. "In many cases, hidden in plain sight."

"I tell people that I could walk out of this office or walk out of my house and see human trafficking and not be aware of it," explained Bill Bernstein, deputy director of Mosaic Family Services. "That's how challenging it is."

The calls and leads from Operation Compass are sent to Mosaic.

"It has the potential for uncovering cases of human trafficking that may go uncovered forever," Bernstein said of the app.

Stafford now has her own foundation to help survivors just like her. It's called "It's Going to be Ok, Inc."

"Because I would tell myself, it's going to be OK," Stafford explained. "Out of tragedy there is triumph and there was so much purpose in my pain."

North Texas is the test pilot project for Operation Compass. The app is free. It's been downloaded more than 300 times so far and launched more than 600 times. Mercer is hoping to build on it.

"Then we can launch in another city and then another city," she said. "I don't know that I saw the vision of what I'm doing now, but I'm really glad that I'm here."