Law&Crime Sidebar - Missing Teen Girl Vanishes in Middle of the Night: Chilling Video

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

When 16-year-old Sophia Cover mysteriously vanished from her Golden Gate Estates, Florida home in the middle of the night, she left behind a locked bedroom door, a dark phone, and a frantic search for answers. Home surveillance footage captured the teenager walking off into the dark with a backpack, raising fears that someone may have convinced her to leave. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber speaks with Sophia’s father, Richard Cover, to break down the unsettling details surrounding her disappearance and the urgent efforts to bring his daughter home safely.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Go to https://quince.com/lawcrime to get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK. HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson, Heather Berzak & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrimeTwitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everybody's all. I love you, kid. Come on home. All right, here we are on a Thursday night with Sophie. So, you ready to sing tonight, girl? It's 12.45 in the morning, and 16-year-old Sophia cover apparently walks out of her Florida home. Surveillance footage captures her leaving with a backpack, but when her dad wakes up, apparently her bedroom is locked. Sophia is gone. Where did she go? That is the question. She has not been seen. We are going to be speaking with Sophia's dad, Richard, to get to the bottom of what is going on here. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime.

I'm Jesse Weber. This is a strange one. This case has been unfolding for days now, and every hour that passes brings more questions than answers. And this is all about 16-year-old Sophia cover, who apparently vanished from her Florida home in the middle of the night. Surveillance footage that is seen here, courtesy of Gulf Coast News, captured. her seemingly walking out the door, dark hoodie, backpack, on foot, and then nothing. And what's not adding up, her father apparently wakes up the next morning, finds her bedroom

door locked from the inside, and the only way out is through the pool bathroom. Her room is empty. The family's dog is barking. And her father, Richard Cover, who, by the way, we're going to be talking to in just a little bit, this is a remarkable conversation, okay? he knows something is terribly, terribly wrong here. According to Richard, Sophia had just moved to Florida, this Naples area four months ago. She was set to start high school in less than two weeks.

Her phone went dark hours after she disappeared. And now he is combing through social media, posting emotional pleas, releasing the last known footage of his daughter walking out into the night. He believes that someone may have convinced her to leave, may be promised her something, Why? That's what we don't know. And Richard, again, is going to join us here. Tell us what he thinks may be going on and what you can do to help. Again, I encourage you to stick around for this conversation. But just to get you caught up to speed here on what is going on. So Sophia cover 16 years old. I want you to take a look at her, okay? Long brown hair, brown eyes, five foot seven, 115 pounds. I need you to see what she looks like because if you see something, this is the time to report it. She had just, just moved to Naples, Florida with her family. According to a post from her father, she'd come to the United States from Panama back in 2014, was living with him.

They were close, really close. He called her his buddy. You're going to hear how close in a minute. But on the night of July 31st is when everything changed. As I said, it was around 12.45 a.m. This is according to the Collier County Sheriff's Office. Surveillance footage from the family's home, reportedly located on 62nd Avenue, northeast,

and Golden Gate Estates, apparently shows Sophia walking out the door. She's wearing a dark hoodie. She's carrying a backpack. Leaves on foot. Again, that's courtesy of footage of Gulf Coast News. And this is where it gets strange. Richard wakes up the next morning.

He notices the dog is whining, agitated, restless, walks around the house, checks the pool bathroom door. It's unlocked. Walks into his daughter's bedroom. Empty. No sign of her. No note. No explanation.

And as you are about to hear, this is incredible. out of character for her. Her bedroom door, as I mentioned, was locked from the inside, meaning she didn't leave through there. She went through the pool bathroom by all accounts, and she left them the dead of night. And here's another piece of the puzzle. The family had only been there for a few months. She was set to return to high school in less than two weeks. She wasn't the type to run away. So Richard has been posting just heartbreaking, desperate pleas on social media like Facebook, making every possible effort to find her. All right, here we are on a Thursday night with Sophie.

So you're ready to sing tonight, girl? Yeah, are you nervous? Not even a little bit, right? Ready to go? You're ready to rock this place over here? Look at this place. All right, look, good luck tonight, all right? Let's see, kick some butt, all right, kid?

Wave to everybody, say bye to the roof of Rick following right there. Yeah, she's a little embarrassed over here, this kid. And under that video reel posted to Facebook, he wrote, Sophia, if you see this, I need you to know that I love you more. than words could ever explain. There isn't a single day that goes by that I don't think about you. I miss your smile, your laugh, and hearing your voice. Home just isn't the same without you here. I'm not giving up on you. I'll keep searching, keep hoping, and keep praying until your home's safe. He even released a video of Sophia's great-grandmother begging her to come home.

Sophia, this is Grandma. I love, I love you, I love you, I love you. Please, come home. I want to see you again. Okay? I'm waiting for you, Sophia. I want to see you, Sophia. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Okay? Bye. And then there is this community Facebook post that has been circulating, urging people to share Sophia's information. And it says, quote, if you know something, please speak up. If you have seen Sophia, know where she may be.

know who she may be with or have any information that could help investigators locate her. Please come forward and speak with law enforcement. Please do not assume someone else has already reported what you know. Even a small detail could be the piece investigators need to bring Sophia home safely. Please share this post. One share could reach the person who knows something. One piece of information could help bring Sophia home. Okay, before we jump into this,

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Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands, meaning you're paying for quality, not a brand name. And look, the 100% organic cotton mesh stitch sweater polo is amazing. Work so well to put everything together. You look stylish. You look fresh for after work, dinner, drinks, upgrade your every day. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash law crime. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's QINC.com slash law crime. And now this brings us to Sophia's father, Richard Cover. I had the opportunity to speak with him earlier. Please take a listen. Please listen carefully. This is the time to report something.

Take a look. Richard, thank you so much for coming on. I know this is an incredibly difficult time, but also an important time as you're desperately searching for what happened to Sophia. First, let me just, you know, I was reading all about this and it's heartbreaking in the sense. You know, you talk about how you've been raising her since she was four, how she's your buddy, and then this happens. I just want to ask, how are you doing right now? How are you feeling? How are you doing as you trying to navigate this and try to get answers as to what's going on right now? Well, you know, emotionally, I'm a mess. You know, I try, you know, to, you know, not cry, I guess is the best way to put it. But,

the answer to the question is I don't care about me right now. Doesn't matter. I have to, I got to find my kid. So every, I would say every day, you know, I get up. I'm lucky enough to have a great girlfriend and partner that, you know, takes care of me, make sure I eat, make sure that, you know, I'm staying focused on what I'm doing. She's been great with helping me post online. I'm 54 years old and I'm not the most savvy when it comes to social media.

The content ideas are basically her and mine and my family's been jumping in. But, you know, to answer your question, I don't know. You know, right now, I need to find my kid. So my theory is I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing and keep pushing. And when it's all over, well, then I'll get a cheese steak and I'll chill and relax and call it a day. But right now, I have work to do. I'm very happy to hear that you have an amazing support system. And I'll tell you, and I said this to you before we jumped on the interview, but I'll let everybody know.

I saw this story. I immediately wanted to jump on it. And I wanted to give this a lot of attention. Well, thankfully, we have a platform that has a lot of eyeballs. So, you know, if anybody knows anything, sees something, they can be encouraged to reach out to law. enforcement. And I want to get into the search for Sophia and everything. But I actually just want to take one more step back. What is she like? What is your relationship like with her? Give us an understanding of who Sophia is. She's a goofball, basically. She is. She lost having fun since she was

you know, four years old. All she did was dance and sing and she's very, will say creative, right? And there's a lot of different ways. It's art, amazing. The kid can draw pretty much anything. Her writing skills, like, you know, I read some of her papers from school and some of the things that she writes. She's just super smart. And that's just what it is. She loves her family. She's a love spending time outside about 14 months ago. I got her a puppy who, and we have a dog already. We have a full-bred German Shepherd who is my dog, right? She's like, you know, my ride or die dog. But I got one for her who was, she's 95 pounds now. And, you know, Sophie takes care of her. She feeds her, washes her, trains her, you know, cleans up her poop

if she has an accident, thank God. But she's just an all-around normal kid. And that's, I guess, the best way to put it. She's a typical teenager, you know, she'll roll her eyes. at me sometimes and, you know, push back because, and I'm okay with that. I mean, I'm a big believer of raising my kids. And I have a lot of them. So you know, I have nine all together if you want to add them up. Seven of them have my DNA and they're my blood. Two of them I raise for the last four years. And I like to raise them all the same way. I want them to experience life. I want them to make mistakes. And I want them to learn from them. No, this is not that, right? This is, making a mistake of a small little magnitude that next time she could do better.

This is something that's life-threatening. This is something that's detrimental to her health and well-being. But she's not very up to this point. She's not been very rebellious. So never left the home, ran away, nothing like that. No, the closest that ever happened was I was away on a business trip overnight. about two hours from our house in Naples. And maybe about two months ago,

one of her friends from Philadelphia came to visit and these two knuckleheads tried to sneak out to meet a boy or two boys in front of the house to talk to them and hang out. It was like 10 o'clock at night. And my girlfriend is like, she's an eye spy. She picked it off right away, told me it back in the house. But that's really it.

I mean, she's never really done anything where she was disobedient or, did something to put herself in a bad spot. And, you know, I see all these messages online, people that say things that are, they kind of suck, if you want to know the truth. But Sophie's not that. She's not that bad kid that's, you know, doing bad things. And I think the worst.

You mean people have made a judgment call already about what happened? Oh, yeah. It's, I mean, and it's not everybody. I'm going to tell you, probably 90 to 95 percent of the folks that are out there have been like, amazing. I can't even explain the amount of love that I feel from the support. But there's some dumb people out there. I'll say that I don't want to say dumb. Let's say less educated folks out there. You can. It's the internet. It's fine. You're allowed to. Yeah. They might say some things that are, you know, not right that, you know, I say would hurt my feelings a little bit. And I know I shouldn't

care, but this is my kid, you know, and I've been raising her on my own since she was four. You know, it's a thing I raised her to be tough because I'm a guy, you know. So I want to take this piece by piece here. What is law enforcement told you? What is law enforcement told you about the search for Sophia, what they've found? And when I say law enforcement, do you know who's actively involved in the search? Is it both a state, maybe federal level? I do.

I was specifically told by the different agencies that are working on the case that I can't divulge certain things that they've done in their investigation. What I can do is answer the one question pretty clearly, which is they have no leads. They have no updates on anything. They have no, like, they have no real, like, idea, I would say, of where she's at. Now, part of what I've been doing and my girlfriend's been doing is we've been going

through every possible thing we can think of, every social media post. What kids like them? What kids are posting on their stuff? What kids will and won't post the posters? And with the level, I mean, I'm going to tell you how crazy I am, Jesse. So we have flock cameras in our neighborhood. And we live in an area that's the northern section of Naples. It's more of a rural.

Every house has maybe two to three acres of land. And your house is usually about a football field off the street. So we kind of, in my opinion, I think we should have done a better job with canvassing the neighborhood with police. But quite frankly, I don't think that anything was taken serious in the first couple of days. But one of the things that I did was I timed how long it takes to get out of the area and end up at each flock camera. I got in my Jeep and I started basically in the middle of the road where I think she would have left from. because, I mean, I don't know for sure, right? But I have a pretty good idea of my daughter, right?

It's a dark street. There's wild animals out there. We just had a six-foot snake in the yard about three weeks ago, and she almost piqued her pants trying to run away from it. So, yeah, so I don't see my daughter at 16 being brave enough to leave our house and walk all the way to the end of the street. There's no way. So whoever picked her up, picked her up probably in the middle of the road somewhere along the way. So I put my car in the middle, drove up to the end, turned right on Everglades and drove all the way down to the dead end, which is a mockily road.

And I timed it. It was like four minutes and 30 seconds, right? And then I did it the other way, which was like three minutes and I think, it was three minutes and 20 seconds, whatever it would be. And I took a graph chart. I wrote down all the things. And then I sent it back to detectives and said, hey, can you guys look within a three minute window of these two cameras? cameras and see if it you see the vehicle. Because you've got to know, I live in a rural area. There's not a lot of traffic here that time and night.

There might have been 20 to 30 cars total in my guesstimation of in the area. So gave them that information and we haven't gotten anything back from it. No hits. Because look, if they hit a flock camera, they get a license plate. They know what car it is. Even if there's two, three, and four cars going through there roughly the same time, well, we have an idea of four cars now. We narrowed it down.

Just to be clear, did they confirm they took that information and analyzed it and tried to find if there was a car? Well, I gave it to them. And I keep getting told that we have no updates on the investigation. And let me tell you, Jesse, Detective Marisol Rodriguez, she's my point of contact with the Collier County sheriffs. I've been lucky enough that I've had other parents of kids that were missing. Reach out to me and say, hey, Marisol was the detective that fell. found my daughter and, you know, this is what the process was. She's not going to tell you information that she has.

She's going to, and I don't know this. This is something I've ever been through, you know, not on this side anyway. And that's where I'm at right now. So they basically tell me, I mean, look, this morning, I came up with a theory. I have a theory of what possibly could have happened. Now, it's actually a theory that would make everything good if it works. right? I handed it to them. I wrote a six-paragraph email with what possibly could have happened. And I sent it to them. She said to me this morning, she's going to look into that.

Okay. And she'll get back to me. So she's been amazing. Detective Rodriguez, like, when this is over, I have to do something like nice for her, you know, because she's been, sorry, bro. I'm not, listen, first of all, you. First of all, you don't have to apologize. You don't have to apologize, and you're not crazy. I think what you just did is next level. Like in the sense of being able to track those times and those movements and hand that information over to law enforcement, I've never heard someone doing that. That's incredible.

That's incredible. And hopefully they use that and process it. And, you know, look, I have to tell you, my heart is going out to you. I really, really feel awful what you and the family are going through as I'm listening to this. And it's so fresh, right? and this is why it's important to get the message out there. If anybody sees anything, I have to ask you, can you share the potential theory you have? I can't right now.

Okay. But, Jesse, I'll tell you what I will do. Okay. If this comes true or if it doesn't, once I'm through this, I'll be more than happy to sit down and give you all the behind-the-scenes info that I have. I think it's fair that there's so many people that are, say, vested into my scenario and what happened with me and with my daughter. that I think the only thing that's right to do is let everyone know exactly what happened and how it happened along the way. But you talk about next level. My girlfriend, we actually got access to Sophie's social media.

She posted to all her friends that she's missing. We got access to her emails. We sent email back to her. We went through T-Mobile to find her phone. Look, even the neighborhoods around here, here, I would say I probably drove at least three days over the span of the last 12, 11 or 12, whatever day it is now, I don't even know anymore, looking for any signs, anything, just below the speed limit.

People must think I'm like going to be abducting kids or something because, the way I'm driving through neighborhoods looking for my daughter. We've spoken to the friends that she has here, and you have to understand, we moved to Naples in March. So she didn't get into school until April. So by the time she got registered into high school here, she only had six weeks to meet kids. And we only had one of her friends come to her house. We spoke to that friend, law enforcement did.

My girlfriend and I have been texting all the kids in New Jersey that she knows. The kids in Philly, she knows, and all the kids here. And even the kids in Cape Carl, because we lived there for a little while before we moved back to Florida. I had a, I basically was working for a company up in PA. So I left Cape Carl and went up there for three years and then finally came back here. Let me ask you this. Going through those conversations and particularly going through her social media accounts, do you have, I know you can be limited in what you can share.

Is this is that what has led you to have a theory here or perhaps someone for law enforcement to speak to? Is it something through those messages? Not really. So what I started to think about yesterday, and yesterday was one of the first days that, like, it's a Sunday. There's not a lot of law enforcement activity. I'm not. So I had a minute to kind of be by myself,

and I keep having a problem with certain things, right? So there's certain parts of this story that don't add up to me, right? And I put a chart together with little boxes of, what are the things that are a problem in this case? And the big thing for me is there's no there's no excuse my friends. There's way my kids getting in a car with a stranger just right off the rip unless this stranger had a reason to coerce her into getting in the big get in a car with them. So my theory is it has to be someone she knows. Now what happens after that is what I can't figure out. But I think my theory might be okay, but we're working on it today. But I didn't

get it from social media. I got it from knowing my daughter, knowing how she thinks. Listen, when I say knowing how she thinks, right? 16 year old girl, she seeks approval of others, right? She is in it, she likes attention from other kids. And she likes, she wants to have a real true friendship with a kid or kids. and over the course of time, for some reason, they kind of fade away. And she doesn't ever get that long lasting friendship. And I think that she is like keying in on that. So there's a lot of little tidbits of things that I believe that created this theory. And I'm just hoping today it comes to fruition.

And I find my kid. If someone did lure her out, it would have to have some sort of communication, whether it was a phone call, a message, a text message. Do you know if law enforcement has gone through her call history or text messages? All right. So I'll give you the timeline of how this went down. Please. Friday morning after I discovered that she was missing, I walked in the bedroom.

I told my girlfriend, Sylvie's gone. She jumps on the phone. She sees on the camera. What time she left. I go into full dad mode, right? I tear a room apart. I search for anything I can find, anything at all. Nothing.

I'd already called her phone probably three to six times in a matter of like 15 minutes and write the voicemail. Like it's turned off, it's not on, right? But when she was at Christmas time, she got an iPhone 17 that was one of her presents. She had got a new phone for Christmas and we had the other phone. Well, lo and behold, every text, every phone call, every bit of communication, every app, everything was right on that other phone. So we had full access to Sophie's entire digital footprint. on that particular phone. Here's where the problem lies.

There was no communication either in any messages or deleted messages that we found as well that had any information about where she went or who she went with. So what's the next thing that sits in my head? Maybe possibly she has another device. Well, when she got in trouble that one time, she lost her tablet, her computer.

The only device she had was her cell phone. and she wasn't allowed to have social media. That was all removed. So the only way to contact somebody was phone call or text message. So now we think, and at this point in time, the one deputy came out to the house. He came out and it was more like, don't worry, she'll be fine. She ran away. We see this all the time.

She'll be back tonight. And if not by tomorrow. And don't even worry about it. Just relax. she's coming back. Well, I can't relax. There's no way in hell I'm going to listen to this and just be like, okay, yeah, whatever. No, F no. So now we start going through everything. My girlfriend starts going through the individual social media pages. She checks all of her messages, all her friends, screenshots every stinking kid she can talk about, saves them. Like we went full investigation

mode because I wasn't waiting 24 hours until they feel like she's really missing. Makes sense? Which I think is a total waste of time. I'm going to tell you, nowadays, the way the world works, when a kid walks out the house, the clock's ticking. They should start looking right now because they can go anywhere with anybody. Just because they walked out the house on their own means absolutely nothing. All that means is they walked out of the house on their own.

They can meet somebody on the corner that they're not supposed to. They could have had somebody, I keep read. about a sex torsion where a kid might send a picture to another friend and next thing you know, they're in trouble because, and they're embarrassed, could be that. The 24 hours of, yeah, let's go, we'll figure it out later. That's total. So my girlfriend and I started our own investigation. We started talking to kids immediately. By 9 o'clock, we'd already spoken to probably 20% of her friends. By 12, we were probably almost all the way done. So now the next thing is, I think I exhausted every measure other than getting the word out. So I said to my girlfriend, I'm like, listen,

let's start posting online. Someone has to see her. She's in the area. We went with next door first, put it all over there, and then slowly but surely have started putting it in social media on Friday and straight through. But here's what happens. Friday night around two in the morning, I wake up and I go, wait a minute, I think I have something. And I said to my girlfriend, And I'm like, do you have access to the Wi-Fi for Xfinity? And she goes, yeah, it's on my phone. I say, let's open that up. I want to see what devices were connected to our Wi-Fi.

And here's the reason. Yeah, but here's the reason. So I live in an area that is desolate. The phone service here is, it's garbage. We have either SOS, maybe one bar, and the phone systems in the house, the cell phones, or any device, does not work unless it's connected to Wi-Fi. My first three days here, I'm waiting for Xfinity to come. I couldn't make a call.

I have to run down the street to talk to people. So I go on, we go on Xfinity, and it's two in the morning, and her and I are running around the house, checking every single device in the house that's connected to the Wi-Fi. And then she says, well, if she added a new device, I get a notification. So now she goes back and checks notifications. We can't find another device that's on our Wi-Fi. We can't figure it out.

So my theory is when she got in trouble, I believe that there was some sort of other phone or mechanism for her to talk to her friends, whether it was she found a way to circumvent all the protections I had on her cell phone because we have all of them. Like her phone was set as like a third grader. She couldn't do things she wasn't supposed to do, you know. And we checked everything. Like went through all the phone, went through every call, every text for the last 60 days. days. I gave detectives the iPhone 13. I handed it to them. I gave them her computer for school, gave them that because they think or thought that maybe she was talking to friends on her school computer on the messages. Maybe that's it. I gave them the computer on Monday.

Let me ask you this. Yeah. What about her last activities? Was she out of the house for a period of time? Did she have an opportunity? Like, for example, let's say it was no digital conversation. Did she meet up with somebody early in the day, the day before, had a conversation. You think, like, let's meet at this time. What was the last 24 to 48 hours before? All right. That's a great question. So the last 24 to 48 hours, I'll go to, I'll start at dinner the night before. All right. So I am an old school Italian. I'm used to all of our family. We all sit down and have dinner together. Every night, depending on what time I finish work. We had dinner at 530. I've been working from home. probably for the last few months, and that's for the foreseeable future.

That's what I'll be doing. And I said to Sophie at dinner in front of everybody. Like the kids are there. My girl's there. We have a son together who's almost two. It's six of us eating dinner, right? And I said, Sof, something doesn't seem right with you. What's going on?

And she goes, what do you mean, Dad? And I said, well, you know, you, for the last two days, I've noticed you've spent more time in your room away from us. than you normally do. And I said, what's going on? And she goes, she points to her stomach. And she goes, that I have my period. And I said, oh, okay, makes sense to me. And I said, and she lifts up her little shirt and she's got a, like a massager with a

heat pad. Like, it's like a little machine. And because she gets her things real heavy, right? Look, like I said, I've been raising her since she was a little girl. We have this relationship where it's, hey, dad, I need tampons. You'll get them for me. Okay, I got you, girl. You know what I mean?

Like, that's just what it is, you know? So that was at dinner, and I said, look, I have an idea. Because I wanted to talk to her about what's going to happen with the school year, and I wanted to have a good conversation with her. So I said, look, so tomorrow morning, I'm going to get you up after I'm done getting myself situated. You can walk Nova. That's our dog, her dog. And then I want you to make breakfast with me, and we're going to sit and go over all the stuff

to plan out for the school year. year. And that was Friday. It was supposed to be like the beginning of the weekend. And our Fridays in our house are, I get done work a little bit early. I usually finish by four instead of, you know, five, six or seven. Excuse me. And we usually either go out to get dinner somewhere or we order food and we watch a movie. We go swimming as a family in the pool. We just do something together on Friday. It's like the end of the week. It's kind of like, oh, we get to breathe, you know. and then I didn't have any real activities planned for Saturday or Sunday. It was more like we're just going to hang around around the house and go swimming.

The house we live in is kind of like a little mini vacation house. It has like a nice pool and a sitting area with a TV outside. It's nothing like amazing, but it's good. It's all we need. And that's what happened. Everything seemed normal with the exception of the cramps and the pain she was dealing with. for the last six weeks, everything has been like amazingly normal. We went to, after her friend went home and they got into that little trouble, right?

And she got her phone taken. And I gave it back to her a week and a half later as we were getting ready to go to Orlando for family vacation. Family vacation was amazing. Like, it was great. She hung out with the little ones. She was engaged with the family. She's doing her normal goofy. When she takes pictures, she does.

does this thing where she's like, you know, sticks her tongue out and she's a little goofball, you know, but it's normal. Like if somebody said to me on Wednesday, yo, your daughter's going missing in two days, be like, nah, she's not. What do you talk? There's no way. Like never in a million years, brother, did I see this come? Never did I see this come? No, there's no conflict. There's no tension. There's no enemies out there. There's no problems with anybody. Nothing like that, right? I don't believe so. No, I mean, she's brand new. here. So she doesn't really have any friends. She's got a couple girls that are, she talks to. What about, what about the, you mentioned the boys that she was maybe meeting up

with that one time you were out to you, were they questioned? Were they spoken to? Did anybody have, I can't answer that because I don't know the answer. But what I do know is on Monday when I finally, last Monday, a week ago today, when I finally met the detective in person, I sat there for two hours and gave them every bit of information that I had, everything. that came from my investigation, all the kids I talked to. Nana, my girlfriend, she sent police detectives, screenshots of the boys and their Instagram. And they weren't boys.

They're grown men. One was 21. Okay. They were grown men. Okay. All right. So that's concerning, right? Yeah.

But so she gave everything. I gave everything that we can think of, including all of her electronics, every step along the way on my own investigation and my girlfriends, we've given that information to law enforcement as well. You talked about the outpouring of support. Have you gotten any personal tips, have been people coming with information, whether it's potential siding or information? Has it been helpful? Has it been useful? Not at all. No. So we've gotten one person, and here's the thing, Jesse. My daughter is, I guess the word's gorgeous. right she's a really pretty girl and she has some latina in her blood and there's a we live in a

community here where there's a heavy uh latin presence there's a lot of spanish folks here so there's a lot of young ladies that have a similar look to my daughter so i would get videos uh from just random people that are trying to help like great citizens that feel for the story and they want to help me find my kid. There's no ill will. There's no trying to do it maliciously. It's they generally from the bottom of their heart want to help. Unfortunately, none of it planned out to anything. We've got a lead that she was at Planet Fitness in Golden Gate City between 7 and 830. I gave that information to detectives. Apparently that turned up nothing. She was cited at a first watch in, I believe it was in Naples, turned up nothing.

What was the other ones that we were told? Those two. There was another one where she was on a beach about an hour and a half north of here, right in Sarasota County. I found that out on Sunday last week. And detectives and deputies were actually in my house last Sunday. And when that happened, I got that tip. And I called into Sarasota to give them the information. And then the same deputy that was here did the same.

that turned up nothing. We've gotten like tips. Oh, one was she went ice skating at Hertz Arena on Friday night. The same day that she left later that night, they said she was there ice skating, which that made sense to me because my kid loves the ice skate. I played hockey a lot as a kid, and that's like one of her things she loves to do. And then the other one made sense to me, which was she was seen at Bell Towers at the opening night of Spider-Man, which is hysterical because my girlfriend's older sister took two of the kids,

Ryan and Camilla, took those kids to see that movie and they were there at the same time. So that would have been interesting, right? Yeah, yeah. But that turned, that turned up nothing as well. And that's who we're at right now. If people do have credible information, if they see her in any way, if they have a clue, what are you encouraging them to do at this point? Don't put it on Facebook.

That's what everyone seems to do. They post their information out there publicly. And my answers are, hey, man, did you call 911? Every post we put up has the case number on the bottom. And I'll tell you, something that's a little discouraging. One woman told me that she put her report in, and it was in Lee County, and she called and said she saw her in Bonita Springs at, possibly at the Sugar Shack with an older gentleman, She wasn't drinking, but he was.

That was the thing, right? And I said, did you call law enforcement? She said, yes. When I called them, they didn't know anything about your daughter missing. I said, what? She goes, yeah, I had to go find the post and get the number. And then I asked Detective Rodriguez, and she goes, she goes, yeah, it's a different county. I said, yeah, but this is like a nationwide search right now.

This is all over the place. How come the surrounding counties aren't? But that's just what it was. Maybe it was a slip up. maybe it was something. But Jesse, one thing I'm learning, the systems we have in place right now to find missing kids, it lacks a whole lot of things. It's broke. The whole lot. It's broken. That's why it's great when there's certain organizations out there that specialize in it, like Nick, Mick, like National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, like they try to help where there's gaps

and deficits in the system. So look, I'm sorry that you're seeing this firsthand. And it's something that I've heard a lot from other parents before. There should be no gaps, Jesse. There should be no gaps. There should be no gaps. Before we go, before we go, as I said, we have a big platform. A lot of people watch. If for whatever reason, Sophia's looking at this, hearing this, what would be your message to her?

Ah, man. Well, so what I don't have to do is tell my daughter how much I love her. She knows. She knows. but what I'm going to ask is what I've been asking. If you are in any type of trouble, Sophia, and I mean whether it's from your own doing or another's, that's something your dad can fix, right?

I can work that out. A lot smarter and more resourceful than you probably will ever know. And I will always have your back. I don't care. What you did, if you did anything, I don't care. It doesn't make a difference. to me, what's important more than anything else is I know you're safe, I know you're good, and I promise you, girly, I will make sure everything else is fixed and taken care of.

I just need you to come home. And God forbid, if you are with someone that is stopping you from doing those things, there's a lot of resources that you're a, there's a lot of things that your old man taught you. And you remember those things that I taught you a lot of things on how to protect yourself, how to throw a punch if you need to, how to run from someone if you need to. That's all. You got to do those things. So you got to do what you just got to do to get home.

And everything else, girl, there's no embarrassment. There's no worry. Your dad's got you. We're going to make sure. We're going to make sure everything's okay. That's all. I love you, kid. Come on home.

Richard, you are an incredible father. I really appreciate you coming on to talk about this. I hope this gets amplified, shared. Somebody sees something. We're going to stay on top of it. You have an open platform here to share whatever information you have and any way that we can help, please let us know. But I'm going to be thinking about you and the family, okay? Thank you, sir. I appreciate your brother. He's amazing. He's amazing. And the Collier County Sheriff's Office has reportedly now launched a multi-agency investigation. Deputies are asking anyone with information to come forward. So far, there are no leads on her whereabouts as far as we know. I'm going to say it again. She's described as 5'7, 115 pounds, brown eyes, long brown hair. If you've seen her, you know anything, you're asked to contact the Collier County Sheriff's Office at 239-252-19. It's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You can also check us out on NBC's Peacock as well. If you want to follow me, X, Instagram, my news nation show, Jesse Weber Live, Monday,

Friday, 11 p.m. Eastern. See you next time, everybody.