A young girl, distressed and desperate, is looking for someone to save her from her abusive pimp — even though just making the call has already put her life at risk.

Rachel Lloyd and her staffers are often on the other end of the line — the first stop in a lengthy, emotionally draining process of transitioning a sex-trafficking victim out of “the life.”

Lloyd, the founder and executive director of Girls Educational & Mentoring Service, is a survivor herself, starting GEMS at her kitchen table when she was 23 — with just $30 and a borrowed laptop.

“It’s about giving young women those things that people can’t take away: skill sets, education, certifications, whatever it is, so no matter what you have something else to fall back on,” Lloyd said of her work.

While there are government shelters for victims of such crimes as domestic violence, there is not one single taxpayer-funded bed in the city dedicated solely to trafficking survivors. So GEMS and other nongovernmental organizations such as the Covenant House and Sanctuary for Families try to help fill the gap.

Juanito Vargas of Safe Horizons said the work with survivors is “intense” at first — and it can take years to prepare them to fully integrate back into society.

“They can have housing and a job, but they’ll still come to us because of the emotional stress the person continues to experience,” he said.