The mother of late actress Daveigh Chase is speaking out about her daughter’s heartbreaking final years. Cathy Chase revealed that the Lilo & Stitch and The Ring star battled drug addiction for nearly a decade after a serious motorcycle accident around 2016 triggered her downward spiral.
In her first interview since her daughter’s death at 35, Cathy described the “devastating” experience of watching the former child star become “completely gone” to substance abuse. She said she suspected for years that her daughter would die young, even searching the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s website for her name.
Chase became addicted to painkillers following a back injury in a motorcycle accident around 2016. Her mother told The Daily Mail that her daughter was “seeking drugs and was partying with the wrong people” after the incident. By October 2019, when Cathy visited her in jail following two burglary charges, Daveigh was “out of her mind”, a moment her mother described as heartbreaking.
“She was completely gone, like, out of her mind,” Cathy recalled. “I honestly thought there was something wrong with her. My daughter was never diagnosed with mental health other than PTSD. But the drugs took hold of her”.
Despite the estrangement, Cathy never gave up. She and another child spent years searching homeless encampments across Los Angeles. At one point, Chase agreed to be taken home upon release from prison but was freed a day early and fled before her mother arrived.
“It upsets me because people are saying I must’ve been a bad mother, but I never gave up on her,” Cathy said. “As a mother, you don’t give up on your child. I was hoping she would still come home”.
Prior to her death, Chase’s friends and former manager John Ryan had been searching for her on Skid Row after learning she was living there. She was ultimately living in an RV with boyfriend Roy Hernandez in Boyle Heights, minutes from Skid Row, until June 3, when she was hospitalized for malnutrition.
Chase died on June 16 from meningitis and a blood infection that escalated into sepsis, causing her body to shut down. Her weight had reportedly dropped to as little as 75 pounds in her final months.
