In the fall of 2014, 18-year-old Sara Graham made the decision to leave her home state of Texas, where she had lived with her mother and brother, and move to rural North Carolina to live with her dad.
Sara was shy, but sweet, and found a job at a local Walmart as a cashier and a greeter. She was a responsible and reliable young woman.
Sara lived with her father, Hubert, and her stepmom Connie, in the small town of Fairmont, North Carolina, very near the South Carolina border.
On the morning of February 4, 2015, Sara left her home around 6:30 a.m. for work. Her shift that day started at 7:00 a.m.
But reliable and hard-working Sara never showed up.
Around 12:15, the sheriff's department received a call for a suspicious vehicle in a wheatfield. When they arrived, they found Sara’s white Chevy Astro Van- actually belonging to her father- off in the field near the woods.
The vehicle was locked, and there was no sign of a struggle or a crash. In fact, there was no sign of Sara either.
Searches turned up nothing, and Sara Graham was officially reported missing.
Sara Nicole Graham was born on April 1, 1996. She would have a brother, and her parents would go on to split up when Sara was young.
Sara, her brother, and her mother lived in Texas, and it was said she had very little- if any- contact with her dad's family growing up.
For some reason, andwe don’t really know the mindset behind her making this decision, Sara left Texas to go live with her dad in the summer of 2014, just after she graduated high school.
Because of her father's heritage, Sara is considered part of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.
Who is the Lumbee Tribe?
From their website, Lumbeetribe.com:
In 1885, the tribe was recognized as Indian by the State of North Carolina. The tribe has sought full federal recognition from the United States Government since 1888. In 1956, Congress passed the Lumbee Act, which recognized the tribe as Indian. However, the Act withheld the full benefits of federal recognition from the tribe. Efforts are currently underway to pass federal legislation that grants full recognition to the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina.
The 55,000 members of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina reside primarily in Robeson, Hoke,Cumberland and Scotland counties. The Lumbee Tribe is the largest tribe in North Carolina, the largest tribe east of the Mississippi River and the ninth largest in the nation. The Lumbee take their name from the Lumbee River which winds its way through Robeson County. Pembroke, North Carolina is the economic, cultural and political center of the tribe.
(Interesting being such a large tribe that the Federal government doesn’t give them full tribal benefits).
So, in 2014, Sara would move to Fairmont North Carolina, a small rural town just north of the South Carolina border. Here she lived with her dad and her stepmom, and while she had a stepbrother as well, I can’t confirm if he lived with them also.
There is very little known about the family dynamics here. Did they all get along? How was their home life? How was Sara adjusting to living in North Carolina, away from her mother and brother? Questions that we don’t have the answers to, unfortunately.
On the morning of February 4, 2015, about six months after moving in with her dad, Sara woke up for work as she always did. It’s important to note too, that these events are told to law enforcement by the stepmom and/or dad, no one else can corroborate this.
She left for work around 6:30 a.m., which made sense since she worked at the Walmart in Pembroke, North Carolina, about 20–25 minutes away. Sara’s shift as a cashier started at 7:00 a.m.
Sara was always known to be reliable and dedicated, so it was odd when she didn’t show up for her early morning shift.
Around 12:15 p.m. that afternoon, deputies in Robeson County received a call for a suspicious or abandoned vehicle. They arrived to find a white Chevy Astro Minivan parked in a wheatfield, all the way up against the woods.
The vehicle was registered to Hubert Graham, Sara’s father and also a Robeson County Sheriff Sargeant. The vehicle wasn’t damaged, and it was locked up. It simply looked as if someone parked it there. Upon learning that Sara had been driving the van, it was odd- there was no sign of a crash, a struggle, and certainly no sign of Sara.
The van was also an older model that needed to be locked manually with a key.
The wheatfield was located on E. McDonald Road near I-95, between Centerville Church Road and Chicken Road. Centerville Church Road is the road on which Sara and her family lived in Fairmont. In fact, the house was 6 miles from where the van was found.
Witnesses came forward to recall seeing the van there as early as 6:45 in the morning, but no one saw anyone or anything unusual around the van.
Sara Nicole Graham had seemed to vanish into thin air, with little clues or evidence pointing to her whereabouts, or what had happened.
This was exceptionally out of character for this shy, sweet, 18-year-old girl.
THE SEARCH & INVESTIGATION.
The search for Sara began on foot, and no one quite could understand what was going on. What would cause a young shy girl, to vanish, with her van parked off in a wheatfield? It was bizarre and didn’t make sense.
Robeson County took over the investigation at first, and coincidently, Sara’s father was a sergeant with the Robeson County Sheriff's Department. Sara’s stepmom was also a deputy in the department.
Officers, investigators, and volunteers scoured the area on foot but found no clues. They brought in helicopters and bloodhounds, but still- no leads.
The area is rural and was just 6 miles from their house. The search took place from where the van was found, on East McDonald Road, to Graham’s house on Centerville Church Road.
So many possibilities.
Was Sara abducted? The van was found very near I-95, the main thoroughfare from Florida up through the Carolinas, Virginia, and further. If someone took Sara, they had an easy and quick escape route.
Did Sara run away on her own? There were no indications that this was something Sara was considering. There were also no signs that Sara was depressed or suffering in any way, but since we don’t know much about what was going on at home at all, I’d say that anything is possible.
Sara’s case received very little attention from any media sources. This seems odd since her father was a Sargeant- wouldn’t he be pushing the hardest for answers in her disappearance?
Just over a month after Sara went missing, on March 18, her stepmother, Connie Graham was fired from her job as a sheriff deputy with Robeson County Sheriff's Department. Connie Graham had worked there for 23 years. This did cause some eyebrows to rise within the community, but at the time, a statement was released that it was due to personal reasons within the department and had nothing to do with Sara Graham’s disappearance.
At some point, interestingly, her father, Hubert, left the Robeson County Sheriff's Department after working there for over 20 years. He took a position in a small town as a police officer. That small town, Rowland, North Carolina, would be where he remains today, however now he serves as the Chief of Police.
ROBESON COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA.
Google Map Image of Fairmont, NCPhoto byGoogle Maps
Robeson County sits on the border of North and South Carolina. It’s a large county- the largest actually in North Carolina when looking at land mass, and it’s primarily rural.
It’s one of the main areas of North Carolina for the Lumbee Tribe, with the Tribal Headquarters being in Pembroke, North Carolina.
The area is also known for being active in the drug trade. It sits about halfway between Miami, Florida, and New York City on Interstate 95 making it a popular stopping place for traffickers.
The county has just over 100,000 permanent residents, although it is known to be a place for migrant workers as well with all of the agriculture there.
There aren’t a lot of large bodies of water, but there are many small ponds and such. The area is also named for the Lumber River that runs through the county, however, the river is much further north in the county where Sara lived and where her van was found.
So we have a very rural place, with access to one of the most traveled Interstates in the country. Her father, a sheriff's sergeant, and almost zero news coverage on Sara’s disappearance.
In early 2022, authorities stated that they had a person of interest and it was hopefully just a matter of time before an arrest was made. While the person hasn’t been publicly identified, many locals believe it to be Sara’s stepmother.
What do you think happened to 18-year-old Sara Graham? Did she run off? Did a stranger abduct or attack her? Or, could it have been a member of her own family?
Sara Nicole Graham is described as a Native American woman, 5’4” tall and weighing around 160 pounds when she was last seen in February of 2015. She has brown curly, shoulder-length hair, brown eyes, and wears glasses. Sara also had braces at the time.
She was possibly wearing a Walmart vest when she was said to have left her house.
There is a $ 5,000 reward for any information on the whereabouts of Sara Nicole Graham.
Anyone with any knowledge of Sara’s whereabouts, or what may have happened that February 4th morning, is asked to contact the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office at 910–671–3170.
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