Friends Share Look Inside Daveigh Chase's Tragic Downward Spiral

On June 17, Cathy Chase learned that her daughter Daveigh Chase had died the previous day at age 35. "I let out this guttural scream," Cathy told The Daily Mail in an interview, "and I went out into the backyard, and I was screaming, ‘No, no, no, no!'"

At the time, Chase's boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, confirmed her death to TMZ, saying she died one day prior after battling meningitis and an infection in her blood that led to sepsis. On June 29, Los Angeles medical examiner records obtained by Us Weekly revealed that her official cause of death was acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), with other significant conditions listed as chronic polysubstance use. (Polysubstance use is defined as using more than one drug or substance at the same time or within a short period of time, according to the Cleveland Clinic.) Chase died in a hospital and the manner of death was listed as natural.

The grieving mom was devastated but not entirely shocked. Chase - who famously voiced Lilo in the 2002 Disney film Lilo & Stitch and played Samara in The Ring before joining the cast of the HBO series Big Love - largely disappeared from the public eye around 2013, and her former manager John Ryan Jr. says she was in and out of rehab before she went missing on the streets of L.A. The actress was arrested in 2017 for riding in a stolen vehicle and in 2018 for drug possession. In recently published footage obtained by the New YorkPost, she can be seen looking emaciated on the floor of a tent or trailer, and according to TMZ, she was hospitalized for malnutrition weeks before her death.

Those who were close to Chase before her life unraveled describe her as kind and magnetic, and say they never gave up on her, even as she drifted further away from friends and family. One source who hung out with her between 2010 and 2015 tells Us she was "effortlessly cool; the girl everyone wanted to know." The source also says friends became "aware she was struggling with drugs," and that they tried in vain to help her over the years. "No one stopped looking for her," says the source. "No one ever stopped caring about her. She was always loved."

In a June 19 Instagram post, actress Amy Castle recalled her former best friend, writing, "She was beautiful, and sweet, and kind, and funny (really funny), and innocent, and stunningly multi-talented."

Substance abuse became a serious issue. While Schwallier told The New York Times Chase began doing drugs at 13, her mom, Cathy, said she became an addict in 2016 after being prescribed painkillers - including oxycodone - after a motorcycle accident left her with a back injury. "She was seeking drugs and was partying with the wrong people." The friend says "there were drugs around," but "it was not a particularly seedy scene," adding, "if you don't have infrastructure to ward you away from harder elements, it can be easy to fall into."

Her behavior was erratic before she disappeared. Ryan told Entertainment Weekly his client was getting "big offers" for high-profile projects when she went off the grid. He was informed she'd blown off a meeting with legendary late directorRob Reiner around the time of their last face-to-face interaction in 2015. The friend says Chase spent the night at his home before a scheduled rehab stint in 2016. "She was very aware at that stage that she had drifted a bit," the friend says. "She needed a safe spot before she went to treatment, so she stayed at my house. She was committed to [getting help] and getting ahold of herself."

People in Chase's inner circle tried to help her. The friend says Chase's father reached out over Facebook around the time she entered treatment and continued checking in afterward. "I gathered that Daveigh had pretty injured trust in people in general… It feels like she had her reservations and maybe did not fully trust those who could have helped her," says the friend, adding, "She had challenges, and those challenges are magnified by Hollywood."

Ryan noted that he wasn't initially overly concerned because Chase had a tendency to disappear for months at a time. "Every year [we'd hear], ‘Oh, she's in Van Nuys, she got in trouble doing this, like, she's floating around.' But there wasn't ever really, like, a missing person report or anything filed, because she was kind of missing on her own will."

Cathy said she searched L.A. for Chase, talking to fellow unhoused individuals and following leads (she was told Chase had been trafficked at one point). "People are saying I must've been a bad mother, but I never gave up on her," Cathy said, noting that she hit the streets of L.A. after seeing the Skid Row video on Reddit. "I am a mother who loved her daughter so much. And I tried desperately to try to get her help, but you can't legally force someone who doesn't want that help."

The source says they recently heard Schwallier had also been trying to locate her, and the friend says he would reach out to him periodically while trying to get a hold of her. According to the source, some of Chase's close girlfriends tracked her down "and offered to have her stay with them and pay for rehab, but she declined," adds the source. "Once you're on the streets like that, it's hard. It becomes your life."

Ryan was working on a documentary tentatively called Finding Lilo about their search for Chase when she died. "Now we're gonna spin it and make it a documentary celebrating her life," he told Entertainment Weekly. On June 18, he urged fans not to donate to a GoFundMe that had been posted by Hernandez two days earlier. (As of press time, donations had reached $4,108.)

"Daveigh's actual family is handling all arrangements, we have contacted [GoFundMe] to let them know this man started this page on his own under Daveigh's name when she was already unresponsive and urging people to report the page and not donate," Ryan said in a statement to Deadline. "There are no medical bills to be paid or funeral expenses. Myself and the family are handling all of those costs." (Hernandez told TMZ at the time that it is "100 percent" false to suggest the GoFundMe is illegitimate.) Schwallier told the New YorkTimes he'd been in touch with Hernandez and made it to the Los Angeles General Medical Center just before Chase passed away; her mom said she identified her body at the hospital on June 18.

In a 2009 profile in Interview magazine, Chase said she hoped her work would make an impact. "I just want to make something that I love and people will respect. I want to do things that will change someone's life." The friend hopes her tragic demise doesn't overshadow her talent. "Her legacy should not be eclipsed by what her final years were like. She deserves to be known as an artist who affected millions of people."

For more on Daveigh Chase, check out the latest issue of Us Weekly - on newsstands now.

Copyright 2026 Us Weekly. All rights reserved

This story was originally published June 30, 2026 at 8:00 AM.