How a Hilton Head fisherman hopes this massive shark can help solve a fatal hit-and-run
It was the first great white shark of 2020 for Hilton Head Island sport fisherman Chip Michalove, so it had to be special.
The 2,800-pound, 15-foot shark showed up off Michalove’s boat Jan. 8 around 10:30 a.m.
Michalove said the shark was graceful, “surprisingly easy to work on,” and cooperated well with him and his three-person crew.
Quickly, he decided to name her Grace.
The shark shares the name with Grace Sulak, a 14-year-old Bluffton student who was killed in May 2016 when a white pickup truck struck the vehicle she was riding in with her best friend, running it off the road and into a tree. The friends were on their way back from a track meet in Columbia on I-26 in Calhoun County.
Sulak was about to finish middle school at River Ridge Academy.
Lance Cpl. Tyler Tidwell of the S.C. Highway Patrol investigated the crash, which remains unsolved to this day.
“It’s still difficult to solve that because the vehicle left the scene, of course,” Tidwell said. “We’re reaching out to the public and still asking them for any information they might have.”
The suspect’s vehicle is a white Dodge Ram 2500 crew cab pickup truck.
The shark was tagged and Michalove collected samples from her as she swam alongside his boat. Grace’s location can be tracked by shark apps such as Sharktivity.
Michalove said he named his catch — the biggest so far this season — to get renewed attention on Sulak’s case.
“These sharks go viral, and if I can do a little bit of good with one of these sharks, I don’t see why not,” he said.
Kristen Sulak, Grace’s mom, said she was incredibly moved by Michalove’s show of support.
“So often we talk about Grace and reference the past, and it’s not often that we get to talk about her in the future sense,” she said.
The family has already downloaded the app to track the shark’s movements.
Grace Sulak was ‘every good adjective you could think of’
Faith Sulak, Grace’s twin sister, remembered Grace as “the funniest person” she knew “by far,” in a 2016 Island Packet article.
“There wasn’t a time when we wouldn’t be laughing,” she told the newspaper. “... (Grace was) the closest thing to perfect in my eyes. (She was) kind, pretty, smart and every good adjective you could think of.”
Grace Sulak’s best friend Emma and Emma’s mother Andrea Dewey also were injured in the crash.
The first to respond to the crash was a driver who was trained as a paramedic and witnessed the crash. Brian Watkins, who was driving a van full of JROTC cadets back to Bluffton after a trip to an amusement park, assessed the Deweys’ injuries and stayed close while emergency personnel came their way.
He also lived just a few houses down from Grace’s family.
“People have told me I was there for a reason,” Watkins told The Island Packet in 2016. “What’s the coincidence of me being there from (Bluffton development) Woodbridge, them being my neighbors and also knowing all three of them?
“That’s what gets me.”
Emma recovered from massive injuries to her back and several weeks in a medically-induced coma. She went on to become a competitive runner at May River High School — the school Grace also would have attended.
On the second anniversary of Grace’s death in 2018, her parents Kristin Sulak and Heidi Hanson worked with the Town of Bluffton to establish a day to memorialize her.
“This is her family’s way of really keeping a name alive, but in such a wonderful way” said Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka after the 2018 ceremony. “We were absolutely in favor of making her own special day, so every May 7 will be ‘A Day of Grace’ from this point forward.”
Sulak said the day is about the community “coming together and sharing small acts of kindness and love and letting it spread throughout the community. Because that’s what Grace was all about.”
What’s next?
Sulak said Monday she hopes the publicity from the shark compels those around the unidentified driver to come forward with information about the crash.
She said knowing the driver would “end that chapter,” of her and her family’s lives.
“It’s always there, it just gnaws at you,” she said of losing her daughter.
But actions like Michalove’s are what keep her family moving forward.
“Every day we are grateful for where we live because we’re continually surrounded by love,” she said.
This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 12:21 PM with the headline "How a Hilton Head fisherman hopes this massive shark can help solve a fatal hit-and-run."
