A Beaufort mom’s anguish. Months of heartbreak and silence since daughter, grandson vanished
A picture of 20-year-old Sophia Van Dam and her 2-year-old son, Matteo, both smiling, stare up at Theresa Van Dam, Sophia’s mother and Matteo’s grandmother.
The headline reads: MISSING.
Theresa rubs her hands across it, trying to press away its creases, as she speaks about what may have happened to her youngest child and beloved grandson and the agony of the nearly two months of uncertainty.
“I miss his little smile, you know?” Van Dam says wistfully of Matteo. “And his twinkly little eyes.”
Four law enforcement agencies have remained silent about the investigation since the beginning. What little she knows is procedural. She’s been told that the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is assisting Sumter Police and the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office in investigating the puzzling disappearance of her daughter and grandson. SLED has not returned telephone calls to the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette, confirming they are involved in the investigation. Kevin Wheeler, spokesperson for the FBI, said they are aware of the case but would not provide information about whether the agency is involved. Sumter and Beaufort County law enforcement have been silent.
Authorities, Van Dam said, have given her “very little” information, leaving the mother of five and former Marine drill instructor thinking endlessly about the final communications she had with her youngest and the things she knows about her that only a mother can know.
What little is known is - the pair vanished after leaving Beaufort in June to return to the house Sophia rented in Sumter. From there the trail goes painfully cold.
The family, she says, is still holding out hope Sophia and Matteo are alive but foul play can’t be ruled out, Van Dam says.
“It is my sister and it is my nephew,” says Sophia’s sister Mariah, “I love them dearly, I love my nephew like he’s my own son.”
The last time Theresa Van Dam saw Sophia and Matteo was at 1 a.m. Wednesday, June 21 at her Beaufort home.
A day later, Theresa tried contacting her daughter by text and got through once by phone. Somebody picked up the phone but did not say, “hello.” Van Dam says she could hear Matteo laughing in the background, and a male voice, too, “and I heard it go, ‘click,’” she said as the call ended.
The last text she received from her daughter was on June. 24. Authorities were able to determine that the text had “pinged” off a cell tower near Santee Cooper Lake on Interstate 95. Van Dam is not aware of any subsequent “pings” from the cell phone.
In a recent development, the home Sophia rented has been “released” by law enforcement. This will allow Theresa Van Dam to retrieve her daughter’s belongings and discover any clues in the house where her daughter was last believed to have been located.
The mother and grandmother will be left looking for answers in the disappearance of her daughter and grandson.
“We still have hope and we still pray but without me being able to see the house, it’s really hard for me to, you know, come to a determination,” Van Dam said. “As a mother – I’ve thought about different scenarios. If there was foul play involved and they have all of the evidence that they need, at that point I’ll make sure that whoever is responsible, if they have done anything wrong, it will be pushed to the fullest extent of the law to bring punishment upon them if they have enough evidence for that.”
Sumter and Beaufort connection
Sophia had been living with her parents in Beaufort and commuting nearly an hour to work in a welding job in Walterboro. In mid-April she moved to Sumter, two hours north of the family home.
Just before she went missing Sophia and Matteo had returned home to Beaufort. Sophia was upset, her mother said, and was planning to move back to Beaufort for good. She had even brought up the possibility of her parents helping her financially so she could get out of her Sumter lease.
After going missing for several days, her disappearance was reported to Sumter Police on June 28. Officers were dispatched and found her car in the driveway but nobody answered the door.
Theresa Van Dam called and told them to check again. “I said, ‘you don’t understand, there is something wrong,’” Van Dam said. “And I said, ‘you need to go and do more than knock on the door and say no one answers and the car is there.’ I said, ‘there is a 2-year-old child involved. I said, I need to know what’s going on the inside of that house. I said go talk to the neighbors, see if there’s been any movement, see if they have seen anything. It’s very important.’”
The anguish takes a toll
Theresa Van Dam said she finally broke down emotionally last weekend from the stress of her daughter and grandson being gone. She misses them. “It finally hit,” she said.
If anybody sees her, Van Dam says, don’t assume that she is with people who are her friends and report it to authorities. If somebody sees just Matteo, or Sophia by herself, also report that, she added.
“We’re hoping she ran away and had to leave everything and is hiding out,” Van Dam said.
A Facebook post previously reported seeing a person and small child resembling Sophia and Matteo panhandling along a highway in Maryland. The information was passed along to police who checked it and put out a “be on the lookout” notification. No additional sightings have been reported as far as Van Dam knows.
“They’ve always said, ‘Well, we still have hope, we still have hope’” said Van Dam, referring to her discussions with investigators. “And we’re praying for you and you keep praying for us.’ Which we have. I’ve prayed, ‘Lord please lead the detectives and all the law enforcement agencies that are involved in this in the right direction so we can get closure as to what has happened or we can locate and find them and bring them home.”
If there was foul play involved, Van Dam says, “it’s going to come out,” adding, “Your sins will find you out and it will come out if there was foul play involved.”
Family members describe Sophia as bright and funny.
“She always found a way to make people laugh,” says her sister, Mariah.
She was once voted class clown and graduated from Battery Creek High School in 2020. She began private school early and graduated from high school ahead of time. Van Dam thinks it was because she was the youngest and picked up things from her older siblings.
Later, she earned a certificate in welding.
Sophia once told her mom she wanted a dozen kids, but then she had Matteo had realized how much work it was.
She had a wild side, too, family members said, and ran away once, when she was 16. “Ever since then, she was involved with the wrong people running the streets,” Mariah says. “I think Sophia wanted to grow up too quick,” her mother said.
Anyone with information is urged to contact Lt. Angie Crumpton with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office at 843-255-3409 or the Sumter Police Department at 803-436-2700.
Read more at: https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/community/beaufort-news/article277279753.html#storylink=cpy
This story was originally published August 12, 2023 at 9:39 AM.
