Daveigh Chase, the former child actress who voiced Lilo in Disney's beloved 2002 animated film and terrified audiences as the ghostly Samara in "The Ring," died of AIDS at age 35. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's report, obtained by Page Six, listed acquired immunodeficiency syndrome as the primary cause and chronic polysubstance use as a contributing factor. The manner of death was ruled natural.
Chase died on June 16 in Los Angeles. She was 35 years old, barely two decades removed from a career that made her one of the most recognizable child performers of her generation.
The medical examiner's findings put an official stamp on what had been a grim, slow-motion collapse. A young woman who once earned millions voicing one of Disney's most iconic characters spent her final years homeless on the streets of downtown Los Angeles, ravaged by addiction, estranged from her family, and unable to access a fortune sitting untouched in a SAG-AFTRA account.
Chase became a household name in 2002 with two roles that could not have been more different. She gave voice to the spirited Hawaiian girl at the center of "Lilo & Stitch" and played the terrifying well-dwelling ghost child Samara Morgan in "The Ring," a performance that earned her an MTV Movie Award for Best Villain. She also voiced the lead character in the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" and appeared in the cult classic "Donnie Darko."
Her career continued through her teens, including a recurring role on HBO's "Big Love." But her final onscreen credit came in 2016, in a film called "American Romance." After that, she vanished from Hollywood.
What followed was a descent that the official record now confirms ended in one of the most devastating diagnoses in modern medicine, compounded by years of drug use that left her body unable to fight back.
One of the most troubling details to emerge after Chase's death was the revelation that she had millions of dollars in unclaimed residual payments sitting in a SAG-AFTRA account. The New York Post reported that her longtime manager, John Ryan, said Chase was "too far gone" to collect the money she had earned from decades of royalties on her most famous roles. Ryan described her as unable to take the steps needed to access the funds because of severe addiction to heroin and fentanyl.
Chase's father, John David Schwallier, told The New York Times that his daughter had struggled with drugs since she was 13 years old, AP News reported. That timeline means her substance abuse began during the very years she was working steadily in Hollywood, a detail that raises hard questions about who was watching out for her.
The circumstances surrounding Chase's death also sparked a dispute over a GoFundMe campaign created by her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, in the days before she died. Ryan publicly warned that no one in Chase's family or circle of friends had heard of Hernandez, and confirmed that Chase already had a trust account at SAG to cover costs.
Hernandez, who identified himself as Chase's boyfriend, launched the GoFundMe campaign as her condition deteriorated. In the campaign description, he wrote:
"Daveigh Chase, my girlfriend, has always been a light in my life. Many people know her as a talented childhood actor from 'Lilo & Stitch,' 'Spirited Away,' and 'Donnie Darko.' But behind the scenes, she's faced more than her share of hardship."
He described Chase's struggles after what he called a difficult childhood and a painful falling out with her family, saying she "was bullied and struggled to find safety and happiness in downtown LA."
Hernandez also stated that Chase had been diagnosed with meningitis and several "serious" blood infections that turned her body septic. Doctors, he said, told him she might not have much time left.
"All she ever wanted was a place where we could live together, feel safe, and be happy. Now, more than ever, I want to give her that sense of home and peace in her final days."
Ryan, her manager, pushed back on the fundraiser. He wrote that "a man claiming to be her boyfriend that none of us friends or her family has heard of has set up a GoFundMe on her and her families behalf," and confirmed that Chase had a trust account at SAG to cover expenses. The total raised and the goal of the campaign were not disclosed.
TMZ reported that Chase was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital earlier in June due to malnutrition. Breitbart reported that Chase had been living on Skid Row in severely destitute conditions and was visibly malnourished before her death, and that the meningitis and blood infections she contracted led to septic shock and organ failure.
The AP reported that Chase and Hernandez had been homeless near the hospital where she ultimately died. A video from late 2025, referenced by the New York Post, reportedly showed Chase looking severely malnourished in a trailer on Skid Row.
The medical examiner's report does not specify which drugs fall under the "chronic polysubstance use" designation. The Cleveland Clinic defines the term as the use of more than one drug in a short period of time. Ryan and Chase's father both pointed to heroin and fentanyl as central to her addiction.
It remains unclear how long Chase had been living with AIDS before her death, or when she was diagnosed. The medical examiner's report, as described, does not address that question. Nor is it clear whether she had access to, or sought, treatment for the disease.
Chase's story is not the first time a child star's trajectory has ended in catastrophe, but the specifics here are unusually stark. A 13-year-old working in the entertainment industry developed a drug problem that persisted for more than two decades. She had millions of dollars in earned income she could not collect. She lived on one of the most dangerous stretches of urban America. And she died of a disease that, with proper treatment, is no longer a death sentence.
Every institution that might have intervened, family, management, the industry, the city of Los Angeles, appears to have lost contact with her or failed to pull her back. Her manager said he tried repeatedly to reach her and get her into treatment. Her father acknowledged the addiction began in childhood. Her family, by Hernandez's account, had fallen out of her life entirely.
The aftermath of a celebrity's death often reveals the gap between public image and private reality. In Chase's case, that gap was a chasm. The girl who gave Lilo her voice spent her final months voiceless, invisible, and dying on the streets of a city that once made her famous.
Los Angeles, a city that spends billions on homelessness programs, that houses a sprawling public health infrastructure, that sits at the center of the entertainment industry's wealth, could not keep one of its own former child stars from dying of AIDS on Skid Row at 35.
The sudden loss of someone in the prime of life always leaves questions. In this case, the questions are not about what happened, the medical examiner has answered that. They are about what didn't happen, and who looked away.
SAMHSA's National Helpline is available at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for those struggling with substance abuse.
Hollywood will mourn Daveigh Chase with tributes and remembrances. But the harder truth is that she didn't need a tribute. She needed someone to answer the phone while she was still alive.
