Biography

Sophia Maryn Payne was born on May 17th 2011 in Henderson, NV.   Before her mother got pregnant with Sophia she had a very distinct impression that there was another little girl that needed to join the family.   So at the first ultrasound her Mom already knew it was a girl.  Imagine the technician’s surprise when she looked and confirmed, yes it was a little girl.   

Sophia’s parents knew she was going to be a strong and fierce girl and she needed a name to fit the bill.   Her parents loved to carry on family names and they knew right away what name they were going to give her.  Sophia’s 4th great grandmother was born on the Isle of Wight in England, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with her husband and sailed to the United States where they joined up with the Mormon pioneer wagon train and walked along the Oregon/Mormon Trail.  They ended up joining up with the Martin handcart company.  This  handcart company started their journey too late in the season and got stranded on the plains of Wyoming in an early October blizzard.  With almost no food, protection, or provisions this company experienced incredible physical, mental and emotional suffering.  A large number of the company died before a rescue party dispatched from Salt Lake was able to rescue them and bring them into the Salt Lake Valley.  Grandma Sophia gave birth to her second daughter as the rescue party was entering the Valley.   So we just knew we needed to name our daughter Sophia after this amazing resilient strong woman.

Sophia was a bright eyed, content and happy baby.  When she was 5 months old we moved from Henderson, Nevada to Belmont, Massachusetts which is a suburb of Boston.   As Sophia grew so did her little spit fire personality.   Sophia crawled at a very early age and was eager to go wherever she wanted and do whatever she wanted to do.  She had no fear.  When she was 10 and a half months old her older sister Jaden left the door to the basement playroom open and Sophia fell down the stairs, breaking her arm.  However, having her arm in a cast was not going to slow her down.  She started walking two days later.   

This fierceness continued as she got older.  She picked up a nickname “flight risk”.  When Sophia wanted to do something or go somewhere she did.  And she did it FAST.  If you took your eyes off her for a second she was gone.  While living in Belmont, the backyard had a swingset and monkey bars.  The monkey bars were 7 feet off the ground and Sophia’s sister Jaden loved to swing on them.  One afternoon Sophia and I were cleaning out the van in the driveway.  Every few minutes I would peek out around the van to make sure Sophia was still around.  Well,  “flight risk” decided she wanted to do the monkey bars just like her sisters.  A few minutes later I could hear a little voice coming from the backyard saying “help!” “help!”.  And there was Sophia dangling 7 feet off the ground from the first rung of the monkey bars.  

Sophia was always up for an adventure even when her parents least expected it.  One day some family friends came to visit our home.  We had to come back in the house, shut the door, and we were all gathered in the kitchen talking. And about 10 or 15 minutes later, we discovered Sophia wasn't with us anymore. We remembered her coming in with us and shut the door but she was gone. So the search began, one group started one direction down the street while the other group went the other direction.  We circled the neighborhood, we circled the block, and then we circled again but nobody could find her.  We said a little prayer, and we started out again. Well, just as I came around the corner, I can see our friend carrying Sophia, who had gone outside, saw a cat and decided to follow the cat. She followed this cat into a neighbor's bush, and was in the bush trying to drag the cat out of the bush by its back legs.   Our friend was able to grab Sophia and made her let go of the cats legs. Sophia  had fistfuls of a cat hair and was crying, "Cat”, all the way home.

Sophia loved living in Boston.  She loved all things Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots.  She loved living so close to the ocean and loved being at the beach.  She loved going to the beach and collect shells, sea glass and other beach treasures. She once found a shark tooth on the beach in North Carolina and she loved all the sea creatures. When Sophia was in Kindergarten we moved to Bedford, MA.  In Bedford she loved going to Davis school and loved all of her friends there. Sophia loved riding her bike and even taught herself to ride without training wheels, if you can imagine that. We had a huge back yard with a trampoline, a swing set, and a hundred foot long zipline that Sophia loved.  Her favorite thing was to get on the zip line and get pulled all the way back up in the trees, and then let it go, and she would fly like a bird, freely through the sky, and she loved it. 

Sophia loved riding her bike and taught herself how to ride without training wheels.   We had a trampoline, a tree swing and a 100 ft zipline. This was one of her favorite places.  She also loved birds like her mama and they both would spend hours watching all of the different birds any place we went whether in Boston, visiting family in Arizona or on our vacations.

Sophia loved all animals.  One day our family discovered a bunny burrow in the yard, with baby bunnies inside.  She was so excited that we were going to have baby bunnies in our yard. We decided to leave the burrow alone, but Sophia would run to check on the burrow on a regular basis.  A few days later we discovered that the bunnies were not staying in the burrow and when they would crawl out they would eventually die.  That week as we returned home from church, I told to go check to see if there were any bunnies that had crawled out and died. He reported that all was good.  Later that afternoon Sophia went to check on her bunny brood to discover that one of the bunnies had crawled out and was dead.  Tenderhearted Sophia knew her parents could save the bunny so she scooped the bunny up and carried it inside the house.   Well, Mom wasn’t expecting Sophia to bring in a baby bunny, and Mom was also not a huge fan of critters in the house.  When Sophia called out “Mom”, I turned around and saw only a furry object in Sophia’s hand.  Mom let out a loud shrieking which scared Sophia and caused Sophia to toss the bunny across the room. It was hard to tell whether Sophia was more upset about all of the shrieking her mom was doing or whether the bunny had passed away.

Sophia was our tough girl who could hang with all of the boys but was also a girlie girl.

We moved to Colorado when Sophia was 7 years old and going into 3rd grade.  She went to Northridge Elementary school where she met her best friend Rowan and several other girls who she became close with. Sophia was fierce with her love of friends.  She made friends quickly and was always kind and accepting of others.  Sophia discovered a love of the cello at Northridge and learned how to play very quickly.  She continued with this through middle school.

In 5th grade her friend Lily asked her to join her rec center basketball team and this opened up a whole new world for Sophia.  She discovered that she not only loved to play but had a natural athletic ability.  She worked hard and played hard and when she got to Ranch View middle school she made it as a starter on the 7th and 8th grade basketball team.   She was fierce on the court.

One of her most memorable moments was when she started playing defense in a very peculiar way.  She was assigned to guard the best player on the opposing team, and Sophia would get really close, face to face with the opposing player while deadpan  staring into their eyes even when the clock wasn’t running.   This understandably disturbed the player and the player had a very poor showing.  After the game, we asked Sophia why she changed the way she was defending, and her response was “I was staring  into their soul! Mom and Dad, and they knew I was coming for them”.  Such a good example of her fierceness.

Once she arrived at Ranch View middle school Sophia wasted no time trying out every sport she could.  She was on the cross country team, volleyball team, basketball team and track team.  

She so loved all of her teammates and thrived on playing or competing together as a team.   She was known as the team's “hype man” and was constantly pumping everyone up.  Sophia always had a boisterous greeting for you when she saw you and quiet was not a proper descriptive word for her personality.  

Sophia had one of the kindest hearts.  She was so intuitive and sensitive to others and their needs.     

While she was running cross country, there was one meet in particular when the runners took off and  disappeared from view.  We were keeping track of what Sophia’s time usually was and as  the runners started coming back to finish the race it became apparent Sophia was taking much longer than usual.  She soon appeared with a runner from the other team beside her.  After crossing the finish line, we asked her what happened and she let us know that the other runner had stumbled, fallen and was on the ground bleeding.  She said other runners were running by her but she told me “Mom, I couldn’t just leave her so I stopped to help her up and finish the race.”

Sophia learned pretty quickly that she hated running but she loved the field events in track and field.  She picked up the shot put and discus and got to work improving her form and distance.  In 8th grade at each meet she would throw farther than the last.  She made it to districts where she placed 2nd in shot put and 3rd in discus.  

Sophia’s goal was to play basketball in high school.  We enrolled Sophia at the Edge Gym with coach Mike.  She spent all winter in Mike’s gym 6 hours a week and was the only girl for months working on her ball handling skill, offensive and defensive skills and shooting.  The amount of improvement she made shocked all of us but she was determined and she worked hard.    She  spent the summer playing for the Thunderridge girls basketball team and was a starter in every game.   She was projected to be key contributor on the varsity team as a freshman.  She loved playing basketball and felt alive on the court. 

This summer thanks to her friend Afton, she discovered that she loved playing girls flag football.  She spent all summer working out with, practicing with and competing on the Thunderridge girls flag football team.  She would come home and tell us “Mom, I can lift more than all of the other girls in the gym”.  

 Sophia was the perfect blend of her parents.  She was athletic, smart, driven and hardworking like her Dad and kind, outgoing, the bestest friend and intuitive to others like her Mom.  She was always up for fun and making things fun.

She loved her two big sisters so much and was the glue that held our family together. She was a fierce protector of her sister Savannah from a very young age.  She was always looking out for her.  She was her biggest helper and her very bestest friend.   She also adored and looked up to her big sister Jaden.  She loved hanging out with her, blasting music in the car and rapping along to the lyrics as they drove around town.     

Sophia loved shopping, fit checks, tiktoks, snap streaks, Raising Cane’s runs (box combo, no slaw, extra toast, extra sauce), dances and time with her girls.

Sophia loved to cook and once she started playing sports she discovered her appetite grew exponentially.  With her parents working full time running their business Sophia took charge of picking out our weekly Hello Fresh meals and preparing them.  The only problem was that Sophia was hungry for dinner at 4pm.  So on the nights Sophia made dinner it was served promptly at 4 or 4:15pm.  I would still be on my end of day work calls and Sophia would bring me a plate to my desk.   Brad and I joked that the nights Sophia made dinner it was “dinner at the old folks home”.    We had the opportunity two weeks ago to go all together as a family with Sophia’s grandparents to South Dakota.  We went on a chuck wagon ride and dinner show.  My parents were shocked when Sophia put away two steaks of her own and then everyone else in our families left overs.  

She was in tune to other people's needs whether it was just offering a smile or "Hey, just come sit with me, come eat with me, come join me.". Sophia was fierce in the way she looked at life.  Sophia always had a boisterous greeting for you when she saw you and quiet was not in her vocabulary.   She lit up a room when she walked in with her smile and cheer you up when she would throw her hands in the air and yell your name.

Sophia was fierce in her love for her Savior Jesus Christ.  She truly saw others the way He sees them.  Sophia was the president of her youth class at church and was always so thoughtful in the way she served the girls in her class.  She loved our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and fiercely strived to learn about them, develop a relationship with them and be like them.   Sophia loved to serve. Once a month a month our family would find an opportunity to serve our community and Sophia loved doing this.  Her family place to serve was with a non profit called “We don’t waste” that give food to people who need it.

Sophia was the hardest worker you have ever met.  She could see a need and without being asked or without complaining she would jump in and help.

A few weeks before her passing, Sophia attended a girl’s camp in southern Colorado.  When they arrived and before they could finish setting up the tents, it started to pour rain, then it started to hail. We had three rounds of pouring rain and two rounds of hail the size of marbles.  During all of this Sophia jumped in with her Mom and Dad and helped us set up tents in the rain and hail so all the girls would have a dry and safe place to sleep that night.

 We are so grateful for every family member, friend, teacher, peer, teammate, coach, leader, and everyone who has affected her for good. Our brains will now be able to make sense of her passing because this just doesn't make sense. And that's okay, because Sophia is okay and we will all be okay. 

We had these pink “fierce like sophia” bracelets and #FTS stickers made to help remind us to live fierce like Sophia. We hope that as you wear these bracelets and see these stickers, that no matter what you do, that you will do it fiercely. 

We are so grateful for the time we had with this beautiful fierce girl. We long for the day when we can hold her in our arms again and cling to the knowledge that our Savior greeted her with loving arms and is still holding her.  We know that Sophia still lives, her body isn’t here anymore but her spirit still lives.  We know that because our Savior was resurrected, she too will be resurrected someday and we will all be able to see her again.  We know Sophia is happy, and we know she is at peace, and that give us peace.

 Thank you for the outpouring of calls, messages, cards, flowers, texts, words of kindness, prayers, food and especially the hugs. We are eternally grateful for each and every one. We want to express our love for our Savior who is there for each of us. He knows each one of us and he is always there for us if we can reach out he will show us he is there.  I  pray that he will seek him and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.