Track of shark tagged off Hilton Head is reminder of beloved Bluffton teen ‘Amazing Grace’

Late one evening three years ago, a Bluffton family got a call from a Hilton Head charter captain who shared a story about a massive shark he’d caught that day.

He’d tagged and released a 15-foot, 2,700-pound great white shark, Chip Michalove told Heidi Hanson and Kristen Sulak. It was a mature female white shark, which isn’t typical for the waters Michalove cruises. And, as it goes with tagged sharks, he’d given her a special name: Grace.

To Heidi, Kristen and their daughter Faith Sulak, it was a gesture by a stranger that meant more to them than he knew. Kristen called it one of the first God winks since the tragic death of her and Heidi’s daughter and Faith’s twin, Grace Sulak.

On May 7, 2016, 14-year-old Grace was killed when a white pickup truck hit the vehicle she was riding in with her best friend and her friend’s mother, running the car off the road and into a tree, according to previous Island Packet reporting. The friends were on their way back from a track meet in Columbia on I-26 in Calhoun County.

When Michalove called Heidi and Kristen, he knew Grace’s story and the loving impact she’d left. He also knew the hit-and-run was still unsolved — and remains so to this day — and offered a free charter in exchange for tips about the truck’s driver. But what the charter captain didn’t know when he dialed that night was how having Grace’s legacy swim on, the shark’s tags letting the world in on her journey, wasn’t pure coincidence.

Amazing Grace

Before the accident, Grace and Faith were only months away from finishing middle school with plans to attend May River High School, where they’d be “sharks.”

It was a fitting mascot for two teens who loved shark week, adored the ocean and, when it came to Grace, had a knack for finding shark teeth. On summer trips to Lure Lake in North Carolina, the twins would wake up, immediately throw on bathing suits and head in.

“You’d have to drag us inside to get us out,” said Faith, who is now studying conservation biology at Furman University. “I’m pretty sure if my sister could, she would eat dinner (and) eat breakfast in the water.”

Along with Grace’s steadfast nature, she was a quiet leader and invited everyone to sit at her table. She did it all with little fanfare.

“She didn’t come home and say ‘Guess what I did,’ it was just something she did because it was like the right thing to do,” Kristen said.

Even with a driving force of good will, Grace didn’t give in easily. When she had her mind made up, that was that and you were going to hear about it. If you tried to stop her on a passionate soapbox, she’d just talk louder, Heidi said.

Here’s what Grace was sure about: She was a runner. A basketball player. A future marine biologist. But first and foremost, family and friends were her everything, and she loved them unconditionally.

Grace’s blend of charisma and benevolence had made such an impact on the community that in 2018, on the second anniversary of her death, Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka named every May 7 “A Day of Grace.” Her parents also established the “Amazing Grace Sulak Scholarship” the year following the accident.

This year, it’s a bit different. Twenty-two percent — Grace’s old basketball number — of funds from an online auction that would typically fully go toward the scholarship will be shared with a fundraiser for Bluffton eighth-grader Kailey Morris, who was diagnosed with brain cancer in January.

“The act of kindness is simple, but what you get back from that feels so good,” Kristen said.

After all, “giving is the best act of grace,” Heidi put it.

In his own way, it’s why Michalove made the call to Sulak/Hanson family three years ago.

Grace’s journey

Much like Grace Sulak, Michalove’s great white had a penchant for moving fast and far.

In a little over a year, the shark hauled it over 4,000 miles, data from one of her tags showed recently.

A pop-up satellite archival tag (PSAT) was able to let the public in on Grace’s journey. It showed the depths she swims, her location, and the saltiness and clarity of the water around her. That tag popped off in April 2021. But an acoustic tag remains on the apex predator, which works in tandem with receivers off the beach monitor to alert for when Grace enters certain waters.

In a 15-month span, the white shark made it as far as north of Nova Scotia and down to southern Florida and its Gulf Coast. If you drew a straight line, she would’ve covered 3,700 miles. But she likely zigged and zagged, covering closer to 5,000.

The closest she came to the beach was a quarter mile. The farthest was between 80 and 90 miles. Grace never swam into the open ocean, but she did manage to swim down 2,750 feet somewhere between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, Michalove said.

It’s the kind of data Grace’s family knows she would’ve been fascinated by.

“Shark Week was like a national holiday,” Faith recalled.

She would’ve been interested to know that the shark in her 30s was unusual by Michalove’s standards. Instead of bolting from the area, the shark stayed off South Carolina for a couple more months, said Michalove, who owns Outcast Sport Fishing.

Since she was tagged, Grace has come back to her beloved South Carolina at least twice. That’s typical of white sharks; the winter hangout stretches from Charleston to Daytona Beach. But then Grace did something else that was out of the norm: After a South Carolina visit, she moseyed down to the Florida Keys and up to Pensacola.

“The old theory where we thought that white sharks don’t like warm water, doesn’t hold true 100%. A handful continue to go south,” the charter captain said. “There’s something that’s pulling a handful to the Gulf of Mexico.”

It’s peculiarities like this that, as an aspiring marine biologist, Grace would’ve had the chance to study. And while Grace Sulak didn’t get her chance to mull over which marine biology program she wanted be in or graduate as “a shark” from Mary River High School — a piece of her legacy swims on.

“Faith got to go to May River and be a shark,” Kristen said. “And now, Grace is going to outdo you — a 15-foot shark.”