A Father's Regret: Daveigh Chase's Dad Opens Up After Her Death

When John Schwallier learned how his daughter died, the news didn’t shake him—it confirmed what he’d long feared. Daveigh Chase, the voice of Lilo in Lilo&Stitch and Samara in The Ring, passed away earlier this month at 35 from AIDS with chronic polysubstance use as a significant contributing factor. On Monday, June 29, her father told The California Post that the cause“doesn’t surprise”him, acknowledging it was tied to“the lifestyle she was living.”

But beneath that resignation lies a deeper ache. Schwallier hadn’t laid eyes on his daughter since she was about 6 years old. They’d spoken on the phone during her childhood, but decades of distance meant he watched from afar as Chase spiraled—a talented child star who voiced characters in beloved animated films and starred in psychological thrillers, only to later struggle with homelessness, addiction, and illness in downtown Los Angeles.

Her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, painted a starkly different picture in a GoFundMe he created before her death. He described Chase as“a light in my life,”someone who’d endured“a difficult childhood and a painful falling out with her family”before finding stability—however brief—with him. Hernandez had promised to protect her and give her the safety she’d never known. He documented her battle with meningitis, blood infections that spiraled into sepsis, all while hoping the fundraiser might help them build a home together in her final days.

Now Schwallier is pursuing a legal claim for some of his daughter’s cremated remains, planning to place them in a handmade box in his home in the Philippines.“I had an empty feeling inside for not being with her for all these years,”he reflected. It’s a heartbreaking coda to a story that speaks to the peculiar vulnerabilities of child actors—the fame, the industry pressure, and the human need for family that no role can fulfill. Chase’s death raises hard questions about who bears responsibility for the wellbeing of young performers, and whether the industry does enough to protect them when the spotlight fades.