SHELTON, Wash. — What began as a mother’s search for her 15-year-old daughter on a spring break afternoon ended with the arrest of the girl’s high school counselor and, months later, a prison sentence, a revoked teaching certificate and a settlement with the local school district.
The case, detailed on Law&Crime’s “Sidebar” program with host Jesse Weber and documented in police body camera footage, unfolded in Shelton, a town of roughly 10,000 people about 60 miles southwest of Seattle.
According to the Mason County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were called for a welfare check at about 3 p.m. on April 5, 2023. A 15-year-old girl had told her mother she was going for a jog and did not come home. She was also reportedly threatening to hurt herself.
The girl’s mother used a phone-locating app to track her daughter to a remote gravel road. When she arrived, she found a motorcycle parked on the road, her daughter’s cell phone sitting on it, and, eventually, a man who emerged from the woods after roughly an hour.
That man was 29-year-old Samuel Cathy, a guidance counselor at Shelton High School, where he had worked for seven years.
“You hiding in the woods tells me otherwise”
Body camera video captured the first exchange between a deputy and Cathy at the scene.
“Is there any reason that a school counselor is meeting with a 15-year-old girl outside of school up in the middle of the woods?” the deputy asked.
Cathy replied that it was “not what they suspected to be.”
“Here’s the deal. I’ve been doing this job for seven years,” the deputy said. “And you hiding in the woods tells me otherwise.”
Cathy answered that he would say he “crossed the line professionally,” but insisted it was “not what I think you’re insinuating it to be.”
The girl’s mother told deputies at the scene that she and the girl’s father had grown uneasy about the interactions between the counselor and their daughter. She said her daughter initially told her she was with an 18-year-old named “Ray” whom she had met on Snapchat, and that the girl repeatedly threatened to kill herself if her parents did not leave the situation alone.
“No high school kid’s going to go hide in the woods for like an hour and not come out and talk to parents,” the mother said in the footage.
When Cathy asked what crime he was suspected of, the deputy told him the investigation involved a potential sex offense and cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s Terry v. Ohio standard in explaining that he was being detained on reasonable suspicion. Deputies also took his phone, telling him it was to prevent the possible destruction of evidence. Cathy agreed.
The interview and what investigators found
Detectives placed Cathy in a patrol car, read him his rights, and he agreed to speak.
He told investigators he was the sole counselor for a freshman class of more than 400 students. Asked how he could dedicate time to each one, he said, “I don’t get to. So I usually pick a handful of kids that I really deeply invest in.”
Cathy said the girl attended a dialectical behavior therapy group he ran and checked in with him regularly. He described recent conflict at her home, including an argument with her mother, and said the two had been “staying in better contact electronically.”
He also acknowledged he is not a registered or licensed counselor in Washington state and said his school role could not be classified as therapeutic counseling because that was “beyond my scope.”
A detective pressed him on the meeting in the woods. “How is this good for her mental health?” the detective asked. Cathy said he thought “having a familiar, comfortable face that she trusted to tell her that it was going to be okay was helpful.”
The detective was blunt: “I’m going to tell you exactly what this looks like and exactly what it smells like and I think exactly what it is. This is grooming behavior. And as a counselor, I know damn good well you know exactly what that is.”
He also told Cathy that investigators would seek a forensic download of the girl’s phone and a search warrant for Snapchat’s servers. Asked when he first “crossed the line,” Cathy said, “I think at this point I would like a lawyer.”
He was released that day because investigators did not yet have enough to hold him.
According to the police report, the girl had Cathy saved in her phone as “my love” with a red heart emoji. Investigators recovered saved Snapchat messages between the two, including one from the girl that read: “I’ll always love and support you. I’ll never abandon you. I will never leave you, Sam. I will always be right by your side through everything.”
Warrants served on Snapchat allegedly turned up more, including a video investigators say Cathy recorded of himself in his car saying, “I love you. I think about you all the time.”
Investigators also concluded the relationship did not begin in April. Per the report, it began months earlier, around Valentine’s Day. On Feb. 14, according to police, Cathy gave the girl two marijuana vape cartridges as a gift.
An ex-wife comes forward
Cathy’s ex-wife later contacted police. She told them she had been a student at Shelton High while Cathy was a counselor there, and that after they began dating as adults, he told her he remembered her from school.
She also told investigators that a streaming account password he shared with her included the student’s first name. She said a colleague had raised concerns years earlier, telling her Cathy had admitted during his first year in education that he liked the female attention he received from students, and later said he had told a student he loved her. She said Cathy also told her he had sought advice from his father, who told him to stop.
On June 2, 2023, deputies arrested Cathy at his home on a warrant and executed a search warrant on the residence.
He was charged with rape of a child in the third degree, child molestation in the third degree and distribution of a controlled substance to a person under 18. Court records show he pleaded guilty to rape of a child in the third degree. On Feb. 27, 2024, he was sentenced to 41 months in prison, 19 months of community custody and sex offender registration. A later filing shows his teaching certificate was revoked in November 2024.
A woman also filed a lawsuit against the school district on behalf of her minor daughter, alleging the district allowed Cathy to groom and abuse her. The suit was settled, and according to a report from the Shelton-Mason County Journal, the district agreed to pay the teen $350,000.
