Mitzi Perdue, widow of the late Frank Perdue — former CEO of Perdue Farms — is heiress to the Sheraton Hotels fortune and is a self-described human rights activist.
Recently she was invited to Ukraine as a special guest of the Kyiv police force, Fox News Digital is told, where she saw firsthand how the people of Ukraine have been doing.
The country has been under attack by Russia since Feb. 24, 2022.
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Now, back home in Salisbury, Maryland, Mitzi Perdue has chosen to help the humanitarian efforts for Ukraine — and as part of this effort will be auctioning off her emerald engagement ring with Sotheby's and donating all proceeds to Ukraine and the efforts to stop human trafficking there.
The ring was recovered in the 1980s as part of the Atocha treasure found in Florida waters.
Mitzi Perdue is shown wearing the emerald engagement ring — given to her by Frank Perdue — at the Plaza Hotel in 1988. She's auctioning off the ring and plans to donate all proceeds to help stop human trafficking in Ukraine, Fox News Digital has been told. (MItzi Perdue)
Likely belonging to the Queen of Spain, the treasure sunk at sea in the 1600s — and the treasure is said to be worth almost $400 million. Bidding on the single emerald ring is "expected to go well into the six figures," according to information shared with Fox News Digital.
"When I was a child," Mitzi Perdue told Fox News Digital in comments sent on email, "my father told me, ‘The greatest pleasure my money has ever given me is in giving it away.’ I took those words to heart," she added, "and he became a role model for me for the rest of my life."
"I know that [Frank Perdue] would share my conviction that donating this emerald to save people from terrible suffering is an extraordinarily worthy cause."
"The current efforts I’m working on to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Ukraine include fundraising to build shelters for women along the Ukrainian border, so that they do not fall victim to human trafficking," she said.
Now, on Dec. 7, 2022, she will be "auctioning off my emerald engagement ring with Sotheby’s," she told Fox News Digital.
Mitzi Perdue and Frank Perdue are shown together in this personal image shared with Fox News Digital. (Mitzi Perdue)
The ring, she said, "was given as an engagement gift to me by Frank Perdue, my late husband."
He "was one of the financial backers of the efforts to find the Atocha treasure — and as a backer, he received some of the recovered treasures," she said.
"Like my father, Frank was a lifelong philanthropist — and I know that he would share my conviction that donating this emerald to save people from terrible suffering is an extraordinarily worthy cause."
Frank Perdue passed away in 2005 at age 84.
Mitzi Perdue pictured with Frank Perdue in New Hampshire. Frank Perdue famously pitched his own product on TV in the 1970s with the line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken." He died in 2005. (Mitzi Perdue)
He turned his father's backyard egg business "into one of the world's biggest chicken companies by appearing in TV commercials full of down-home charm," according to an Associated Press obituary of him from January 2015.
Perdue, as CEO, famously pitched his own product on TV in 1971 with the line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken."
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Perdue Farms Inc., a fourth-generation, family-owned food and agriculture company in the U.S., went from annual sales of $56 million in 1970 to $2.8 billion in 2003, according to the AP. Today it employs over 20,000 people.
Mitzi Perdue is shown during a recent trip to Ukraine. "The brave Ukrainian women … will not let their spirits be crushed," she wrote in a recent op-ed published by Fox News. (Mitzi Perdue)
Mitzi Perdue explains on her website that she "has had a lifelong fascination with what it takes to lead the best life."
She holds degrees from Harvard University and George Washington University, is a past president of the 40,000 member American Agri-Women and was one of the U.S. Delegates to the United Nations Conference on Women in Nairobi, her biography also details.
"People living in these conflict zones are especially vulnerable to human trafficking."
She writes for the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents and hosts EarthX TV’s show, "The Pen and the Planet."
Several years ago, she wrote the book "Tough Man, Tender Chicken: Business and Life Lessons from Frank Perdue," which reached No. 5 on the business biography bestseller list on Amazon.
She’s also the author of "I Didn’t Bargain for This," a tale of growing up as a hotel heiress, and other books.
Mitzi Perdue and Frank Perdue on their wedding day in July 1988, in a personal image shared with Fox News Digital. (Mitzi Perdue)
In addition, she created a computer app, B Healthy U, which is designed to "help people track the interactions of lifestyle factors that influence their energy, sleep, hunger, mood and ability to handle stress," her biography says.
As an artist, she also designed EveningEggs™ handbags.
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At the Sotheby's auction on Dec. 7, 2022, of her emerald ring, people will have the opportunity to bid on the ring — while "at the same time," she notes on her biography page, make "an amazing difference in the lives of potential victims of human trafficking in Ukraine."
Mitzi Perdue said that "even for those [Ukrainians] not displaced, the war heightens individuals' risk of violence and trafficking. People living in these conflict zones are especially vulnerable to human trafficking," she noted in a recent op-ed in Newsweek.
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"The traffickers prey on the vulnerable and all too often, they promise a woman who's desperate that they'll provide food, shelter, a job [and] most of all, safety. In fact, the woman may end up sex-trafficked in a faraway country."
