Todd and Theo Sabatini Were Found Safe. This Is How the Search Unfolded
A routine walk in McHenry became a two-state search built from an abandoned stroller, surveillance video, a rideshare, a police-station encounter and a final trail through Milwaukee.
At noon on Saturday, Aug. 8, there was no reason for Todd Sabatini’s walk with his 22-month-old son, Theo, to look like the beginning of a missing-person case. The 36-year-old father and the toddler often went out together near their home in McHenry, Illinois. To the family, this was normal.
Four hours later, normal had collapsed.
Todd and Theo had not returned. Relatives contacted police. What made the delay alarming was not simply the clock: officers were told that staying away for so long was out of character for Todd, and that he had not left prepared for an extended trip with a toddler. The question was no longer when they would be home. It was where they had gone.
The first physical clue made the situation stranger. Theo’s stroller was found behind a local business. A walk with a 22-month-old had apparently continued without the stroller, and the search began to move from streets and parks into the city’s patchwork of cameras and witnesses.
Surveillance footage gave detectives fragments rather than an answer. Todd and Theo were seen at a Jewel-Osco supermarket. Investigators learned that Todd had tried to make contact with someone at Zion Lutheran Church. Police also said he spoke with someone at a Taco Bell. Each point proved that father and son were moving, but none explained why.
Then the map widened beyond Illinois.
Investigators determined that Todd had used a rideshare and reached the Greenfield Police Department in Wisconsin. According to McHenry police, he spoke with an officer there. At about 2 p.m. Saturday, Todd and Theo left the station on foot.
That detail became one of the most unsettling parts of the timeline. The missing father had been inside a police department after leaving McHenry, yet at the time he was not simply a man standing in front of a missing-person bulletin. The wider alarm from his family and the emerging trail were still being assembled. What Todd discussed with the Greenfield officer has not been made public.
Back in McHenry, police circulated photographs and descriptions. Theo had last been seen in a blue shirt and dark shorts. Todd was described as wearing a blue-and-black flannel shirt, a gray tank top, jeans and Converse shoes. Police also warned that current photographs mattered: he was clean-shaven, despite images that showed him with a full beard. Both were entered into law-enforcement databases as missing persons.
As Saturday turned into Sunday, the investigation became a two-state search. Officers checked tips and reconstructed movements while agencies in Illinois and Wisconsin worked the same problem from different directions. The strongest new information pointed north: McHenry police said they had reliable information placing Todd and Theo in Milwaukee.
That changed the search from a broad question into a city.
Milwaukee is roughly 60 miles from McHenry. A later police account reported by the New York Post added another piece to the route, saying Todd and Theo had first traveled by rideshare into the Salem Lakes area before eventually reaching Greenfield. After they left the Greenfield police station, reports and tips later placed them in Milwaukee, where they were said to be looking for food and other necessities.
By Sunday, another ordinary piece of urban infrastructure became part of the case: a public bus. Todd and Theo were seen on the Milwaukee County Transit System. Transit employees helped detectives as the search closed in.
The ending came on Aug. 9. McHenry police announced that their detectives had found both father and son safely. The department thanked residents, tipsters and law-enforcement partners in Illinois and Wisconsin. The search that had begun with a missed return time and an abandoned stroller ended with the pair alive.
They were taken back to McHenry. According to the later police account, Todd and Theo received appropriate services and were reunited with family.
The relief did not answer every question. Police have not publicly explained why Todd left on what the family considered a normal walk and then traveled with Theo across state lines. They have not disclosed what he told the officer in Greenfield. At the time of the final update, authorities were not seeking criminal charges, and the circumstances remained under investigation.
That unresolved space is important. The known story is dramatic enough without inventing a motive: a father and toddler left home around noon; by late afternoon their family knew something was wrong; a stroller, store cameras, a church, a fast-food stop and a rideshare built the first trail; a brief encounter inside a Wisconsin police station complicated it; public tips pushed the search toward Milwaukee; and a city bus helped bring detectives to the final stretch.
For more than a day, every new clue seemed to move Todd and Theo farther from the place where the search began. In the end, the same network of ordinary places that made their movements visible — shops, streets, a police desk, transit and people willing to report what they had seen — helped lead them back to their family alive.
