From Disney Voice to the Streets: Daveigh Chase's Hidden Struggle

When Daveigh Chase voiced Lilo in Disney’s 2002 animated hit Lilo&Stitch and played the terrifying Samara in The Ring, she seemed destined for a long career in entertainment. But the child star who won MTV’s Best Villain award in 2003 would largely vanish from public life within a decade, ultimately dying at 35 from AIDS and complications related to chronic polysubstance use—a trajectory that friends and family say was far more heartbreaking than the headlines suggest.

Chase died on June 16, with her mother Cathy learning the news on June 17. According to Los Angeles medical examiner records, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome was listed as her official cause of death, alongside chronic polysubstance use and other significant conditions. Her boyfriend Roy Hernandez confirmed she’d been battling meningitis and a blood infection that led to sepsis before her death. What many didn’t know was that Chase had been living on the streets of Los Angeles for years, missing for over a decade before those who loved her found her again.

The actress’s spiral didn’t happen overnight. Chase was 8 when she landed the Lilo role and worked steadily between 2002 and 2011, appearing in projects including Donnie Darko alongside Jake Gyllenhaal. But around 2013, she largely disappeared from the entertainment world. According to her former manager John Ryan Jr., she had been cycling in and out of rehab. She was arrested in 2017 for riding in a stolen vehicle and again in 2018 for drug possession. By the time footage surfaced showing her emaciated on the floor of a tent, she’d become unrecognizable to those who once knew her.

Those close to Chase paint a portrait of someone caught between two worlds. One friend who knew her between 2010 and 2015 described her as effortlessly cool—the girl everyone wanted to know. She didn’t lean into her fame; she actively avoided it, wanting to be known for who she was beyond Hollywood. She was gracious, creative, and part of a circle of musicians, designers, and photographers who simply wanted normal lives. Yet underneath that magnetism, friends became aware she was struggling with drugs. Their attempts to help were consistent but ultimately unsuccessful. A friend who spent time with her between 2013 and 2016 noted that Chase had no contact with her father, John David Schwallier, since she was 19.

The path to addiction appears to have been complicated by both circumstance and trauma. While her father told The New York Times she began using drugs at 13, her mother said the addiction deepened in 2016 after Chase was prescribed oxycodone and other painkillers following a motorcycle accident that injured her back. But the roots ran deeper. Chase had previously been diagnosed with PTSD, and her parents had divorced when she was very young. Her childhood, as manager Ryan put it, was“f***ed up.”She didn’t talk much about her issues; instead, she disappeared into them.

By 2015, when Ryan last saw her face-to-face, Chase had begun blowing off major opportunities—including a meeting with legendary director Rob Reiner—even as high-profile offers came her way. A friend offered his home as a safe place before a scheduled rehab stint in 2016, and Chase seemed committed to getting help. But trust was broken somewhere along the way. As one friend reflected,“She 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.”

What followed was years of being missing on her own terms. She’d resurface periodically in different parts of Los Angeles—Van Nuys, Skid Row—but no missing person report was ever formally filed because, as Ryan noted, she was choosing her own absence. Meanwhile, her mother searched the streets herself, talking to unhoused individuals and following leads. Close girlfriends tracked her down and offered her places to stay and paid rehab, but Chase declined. Her father tried to reconnect via Facebook. Everyone kept looking, but once someone is living on the streets, that life becomes consuming. It becomes theirs.

Chase’s legacy shouldn’t be reduced to her final years. In a 2009 Interview magazine profile, she said,“I just want to make something that I love and people will respect. I want to do things that will change someone’s life.”For millions who grew up with her voice as Lilo or remember her haunting performance in The Ring, she did exactly that. The tragedy isn’t just that she died—it’s that the system, and perhaps the industry itself, failed to catch her before she fell so far that no one could reach her anymore.