Ring star Daveigh Chase’s dad shares heartbreaking tribute after death

Daveigh Chase’s father opened up about how he’s living without his daughter as he marked what would have been her 36th birthday.

While speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, John Schwallier said his late daughter is ‘constantly’ on his mind following the Ring star’s tragic death.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner later determined that Chase died due to a combination of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and polysubstance use disorder. 

‘Every day I am thinking about her constantly,’ said Schwallier via phone after calling up the Daily Mail to note that Chase would have turned 36 on Friday, July 24.

Schwallier, who previously vented his frustrations about his ex-wife Cathy Chase to the Daily Mail shortly after his daughter’s death, accused her of making it difficult to remember his late daughter.

‘The sad part is the only pictures I have of [Daveigh] is what I’ve printed on the internet, since her mother kept me away from her,’ he claimed.

The late Ring star Daveigh Chase’s father spoke exclusively with the Daily Mail on Friday as he marked what would have been his her 36th birthday. Chase died on June 16 from AIDS and polysubstance use disorder; she’s pictured in 2011 in LA

‘Every day I am thinking about her constantly,’ said Schwallier. ‘The sad part is the only pictures I have of [Daveigh] is what I’ve printed on the internet, since her mother kept me away from her,’ he claimed. Schwallier posted a heartbreaking childhood pH๏τo of his daughter and himself just days after her death (pictured)

The Daily Mail has reached out to Cathy Chase for comment but has not yet received a response. 

The late actress’s father – who noted that he had still not received any of Chase’s remains following her cremation – said that ‘She was taken from this life way too early.’ 

Schwallier somberly added: ‘I just want to wish her a happy birthday today and [tell her] that she is on my mind every day.’

EXCLUSIVE The Ring star Daveigh Chase’s ugly family turmoil revealed after shocking AIDS death

Chase’s father managed to find a small silver lining in his daughter’s untimely death.

Schwallier said that he hoped the news that Chase had died from HIV/AIDS could help to raise awareness about the disease.

He noted that rates of HIV infections and AIDS deaths have been rising in parts of the world.

While deaths from AIDS have decreased significantly across the globe from their peak in the early 2000s, multiple African nations, including South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, have seen an uptick since 2021, according to the University of Washington’s Insтιтute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

A 2021 study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health also found that the rates of new HIV/AIDS cases have risen since 2010 in the United States and several countries in South America and Western and Eastern Europe, including Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Ukraine and Russia.

Schwallier somberly added: ‘I just want to wish her a happy birthday today and [tell her] that she is on my mind every day’; Chase is pictured in 2008 in LA

Chase’s father managed to find a small silver lining in his daughter’s untimely death, as he said he hoped it would raise awareness about HIV/AIDS infections and deaths, which have risen in some countries in recent years following nearly two decades of significant declines

Schwallier previously spoke via phone with the Daily Mail from his home in the Philippines in late June, when he learned that his daughter had died from AIDS and drug abuse.

‘I’m not surprised,’ he said in a whisper about her cause of death. Daveigh had become so emaciated that the dad had a hard time believing it was actually her body.

EXCLUSIVE Devastating truth about The Ring star’s shock death at 35: Mom reveals real reason for fatal spiral

‘I was beside myself at first when I finally saw her,’ he admitted. ‘I thought they were hustling me at first.’ 

Schwallier went on to signal a growing rift with his ex, Cathy Chase, as he tried to get control of Chase’s ashes after she was cremated.

‘I didn’t think it was my daughter,’ he said of the actress. 

‘She must’ve weighed 65 pounds and looked even worse than that video going around,’ he continued. ‘I touched her thigh above her knee, and it was just bone.’ 

Daveigh, best known for playing the little girl in the horror film The Ring, had drifted into addiction and homelessness after her acting career dwindled.

When asked about claims Chase may have been the victim of human trafficking, her father replied, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

Schwallier spoke about the turmoil in her family in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail in late June. Chase is pictured in 2012 in LA

Schwallier signaled a growing conflict with his ex, Cathy Chase, despite their decades apart. ‘If Daveigh was with me, she would not have turned out like this,’ he claimed; Chase is pictured as a child with her mother

Schwallier hinted that he may wage a legal battle with his ex-wife if necessary to gain control of a portion of his daughter’s remains. 

‘I will fight her for Daveigh’s remains in Probate Court,’ he declared on the phone. ‘Daveigh was emancipated, so I don’t think she will get any money. I will fight her on that.

‘It’s not about the money,’ Schwallier added. ‘This was my daughter, and I didn’t get to see my daughter for years because of her [mother]. 

BREAKING NEWS The Ring star Daveigh Chase’s autopsy reveals actress died from AIDS after painful health battle

‘I want her remains because she belongs with me. [Chase’s mother Cathy] can keep half [of the ashes] if she wants, but that is my daughter,’ he added.

The Daily Mail attempted to contact Chase, but has been unable to reach her after previously speaking with her earlier in June.

Schwallier, who has homes in Nevada but now lives in the Philippines with his current wife, also unloaded on his ex-wife, Cathy, whom he accused of keeping their daughter from him when she was a child. 

‘I have been looking for my daughter for 13 years. Where was the media then? It’s tragic,’ he said. ‘I have since spoken to Daveigh’s friends, trying to get to know my daughter.’

He signaled a growing conflict with his ex, despite decades apart. 

‘I will fight her for Daveigh’s remains in Probate Court,’ Chase’s father declared on the phone, before accusing his ex of focusing on their daughter’s money immediately after her death; Cathy Chase’s LA home is pictured days after Daveigh’s death

Schwallier said he would fight his ex-wife for part of Chase’s remains. ‘I want her remains because she belongs with me. [Chase’s mother Cathy] can keep half [of the ashes] if she wants, but that is my daughter,’ he said; Chase is pictured in 2012 in West Hollywood

‘I didn’t think it was my daughter,’ he said after seeing her body. Chase’s death was determined to be due to a combination of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and polysubstance use disorder

‘She must’ve weighed 65 pounds and looked even worse than that video going around,’ he continued. ‘I touched her thigh above her knee, and it was just bone’

‘If Daveigh was with me, she would not have turned out like this,’ Schwallier claimed. 

Schwallier said he was in Las Vegas on June 16 – the day of Chase’s death – when he received a call from Roy Hernandez, a man claiming to be her boyfriend.

His daughter was apparently still alive at the time, and he said Hernandez told him that she was going in and out of consciousness.

Daveigh’s father added that he had not seen the disturbing videos of her writhing around on the floor in agony at the time of the call.

Schwallier recounted his heartbreaking final words to his daughter, as he ‘spoke’ to her via speaker while Hernandez held the phone to her. 

‘I just told her I love her and that I’ve been looking for you. I told her, “I have a place to take you if you make it out of the hospital,”‘ Schwallier recalled. ‘I said, “I’m on my way, I will be there in three or four hours.” I made it to the hospital in about two and a half.’

The Daily Mail has so far been unable to contact Hernandez, who had reportedly been living on the street with Chase prior to her death.

When Schwallier arrived at the hospital in Los Angeles, he found Hernandez was already there.

Schwallier said he ‘spoke’ to Chase via speaker one last time while her boyfriend held the phone to her. ‘I just told her I love her and that I’ve been looking for you. I told her, “I have a place to take you if you make it out of the hospital,”‘ Schwallier recalled; Chase is seen in 2013

He said Hernandez introduced himself as Daveigh’s boyfriend of six years, and he was joined by his mother and sister, both of whom were crying.

Schwallier said Hernandez’s family told him that his daughter and her boyfriend would sometimes visit the Hernandez family home for a shower and some food when they found themselves with nothing. 

Video of Diddy inviting then 12-year-old Daveigh Chase to ‘afterparty’ resurfaces after her death

However, they would always return to the streets, where they lived in either a tent or an RV.

‘[Hernandez] said, “I did the best I could, sir,”‘ Schwallier recalled. 

‘But if you saw my daughter, it didn’t look like the best to me.’

But he didn’t interrogate the matter further because he was so overcome with shock and grief at Chase’s plight. 

‘Not seeing my daughter for a long time, I didn’t want to go there with [Hernandez],’ Schwallier said. ‘I was beside myself seeing her that way. She was a bag of bones.’

He added, ‘I actually felt sorry for [Hernandez],’ before noting, ‘There was another homeless girl there who was Daveigh’s friend, and they were crying.’

He was greeted at the hospital by Roy Hernandez (L), who identified himself as Chase’s boyfriend. ‘[Hernandez] said, “I did the best I could, sir,”‘ Schwallier recalled. ‘But if you saw my daughter, it didn’t look like the best to me’

After his daughter had died, Schwallier said he left the hospital believing that she had died of a blood infection and other complications; Chase is pictured in 2013

After his daughter had died, Schwallier said he left the hospital believing that she had died of a blood infection and other complications. 

While speaking to the Daily Mail, Daveigh’s father described the family conflicts that had afflicted her.

He said that the child star had been emancipated from her mother, Cathy Chase, when she was just 16 years old. 

BREAKING NEWS The Ring star ᴅᴇᴀᴅ at 35… days after lover’s plea for help amid ‘painful falling out’ with family

Because of that, he predicted a potential battle down the road over whatever money from residual payments that his daughter might have earned over the years but never collected. 

Schwallier, who claimed that he was kept away from his daughter for much of her childhood, said his last serious conversation with her occurred when she was just three-and-a-half years old.

‘I would keep calling and leave messages, but no one would call me back,’ Schwallier said of his attempts to reconnect with Chase as a child, when he was living in Las Vegas and she was living with her mother in Oregon. ‘I never spoke to Daveigh again. I paid Cathy every penny to take care of Daveigh, but she kept her from me.’ 

Cathy Chase previously spoke to the Daily Mail about her frantic search online for any trace of her actress daughter.

It had become part of her nightly routine to scroll Google and Reddit, hoping for even a glimpse of where her ‘sunshine’ might be or how to find her.

Schwallier claimed his ex-wife Cathy Chase (pictured) had kept him away from Chase as a child

He said that the child star had been emancipated from her mother when she was just 16, so he predicted a potential battle over whatever money from residual payments his daughter might have earned over the years but never collected; Chase is pictured in 2011 in LA

Then, the following morning, the news alerts came through. Daveigh was ᴅᴇᴀᴅ at just 35.

‘I was devastated. It felt like something inside of me squeezing all of the air out of me, and at the same time, it felt like I was exploding outwardly,’ Cathy told the Daily Mail.

On Friday, June 19, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner revealed that Daveigh died from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Chronic polysubstance use, or the repeated use of more than one drug over time, was also listed as a significant condition that contributed to her death. 

The Ring star Daveigh Chase’s friends searched for her on Skid Row before shock death at 35

When Cathy read the news of her daughter’s death, she let out a scream and ran out into her backyard, where she paced back and forth, overwhelmed with grief and disbelief.

‘I let out this guttural scream and I just was running. And these weird sounds were coming out of me, these kind of, like, primeval sounds,’ Cathy said. 

‘And I went out into the backyard, and I was screaming, “No, no, no, no!” I am in so much pain but I hope her soul heard me.’

Subconsciously, she had been mentally preparing for this moment for years. 

‘I actually thought it was fake news, that first time I saw it, and then, but then all of a sudden, it’s all of these different legitimate sites had her name and I realized that it wasn’t fake,’ Cathy said of the first reports of her daughter’s death.

Cathy Chase previously spoke to the Daily Mail about her frantic search online for any trace of her actress daughter, whom she had not heard from in years, and her shock at learning of her death

She said she went to the hospital the morning of Thursday, June 18, where she was able to identify her daughter’s remains as she and a chaplain prayed over Daveigh’s body.

‘We were able to lay hands and pray. Technically, we were touching the glᴀss, but it’s as close as we could get, so we were able to lay hands and pray for her,’ she said, speaking to the Daily Mail just hours later.

‘It was a beautiful experience, and, I feel very blessed, too, to have been able to share that with my daughter.’

The Ring star Daveigh Chase charged with drug possession as warrant is issued for her arrest

Cathy said she left her work as a nurse and moved to Los Angeles to support her daughter’s acting career after raising Daveigh in Albany, Oregon.

She started in commercials at the tender age of three and moved to Hollywood in the early 2000s, where she instantly got small roles in major films, playing a singing girl in Steven Spielberg’s AI Artificial Intelligence and Jake Gyllenhaal’s sister in Donnie Darko. 

Cathy said the downward spiral began after a motorcycle accident around 2016, when Daveigh injured her back.

She was prescribed strong painkillers, including oxycodone, which she believes marked the start of her addiction.

After that, she began taking stronger drugs and fell into a party lifestyle. 

Cathy said she went to the hospital on June 18 to identify Daveigh’s body and to pray over her with a chaplain

‘She was seeking drugs and was partying with the wrong people. I never kicked my daughter out. She wanted freedom and these people got her hooked on some drugs. That was the beginning,’ Cathy said.

From 2018, Daveigh was in and out of jail on drug and other charges. 

The Ring star Daveigh Chase ‘is arrested and jailed on $25,000 bond for joyriding a stolen car’ in Los Angeles

The first time Cathy visited her in jail was 2019, after she had been charged with two counts of burglary.

She said the change in her daughter was shocking.

‘She was completely gone, like, out of her mind. 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.’ 

During jail visits from July 2023 to January 2024, Cathy said they spoke about Daveigh coming home. They made an agreement that when she was released, Cathy would pick her up.

‘But when I got there, she never waited. She went back to the streets and I couldn’t find her,’ Cathy said.

The last time she briefly saw her daughter was in 2025. After that, contact was lost.

Cathy believes Daveigh held onto her Christian faith right until the end. She became a promising child actress in the early 2000s. Her big break was voicing Lilo in DIsney’s Lilo & Sтιтch in 2002, when she was just 11; Chase is pictured in The Ring with Naomi Watts

Cathy and her younger son, Daveigh’s 19-year-old brother, continued searching across LA.

They drove through areas of Los Angeles, including Hollywood and Koreatown near Vermont Avenue, speaking to homeless people and trying to follow any lead they could.

At times, she said people told her they recognized Daveigh and claimed she had been trafficked, something she was never able to confirm.

As time went on, the search became more desperate. Cathy and her son began canvᴀssing encampments across the city, looking for any sign of her daughter.

She said the only moments of certainty came when Daveigh was arrested and briefly held in jail. 

‘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.’

Daveigh became a promising child actress in the early 2000s. Her big break came in 2002, when she was just 11, voicing Lilo in Disney’s animated movie Lilo & Sтιтch.

Aged 12 in 2003, she won the ‘Best Villain’ MTV Movie Award for her turn in The Ring. Ashton Kutcher and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs presented her with the award

Her performance as an orphaned Hawaiian girl who makes friends with a mischievous blue alien earned her a Young Artist Academy Award for best voice-over performance in the pre-teen category. 

She then landed her most recognizable role as Samara in the horror classic The Ring, starring alongside Naomi Watts. She played Samara, the haunting long-haired girl at the center of the cursed VHS tape. 

Chase’s performance earned her the MTV Movie Award for best villain in 2003. Ashton Kutcher and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs presented her with the award.

She returned to the role of Lilo soon after, reprising the character in Sтιтch! The Movie and the Lilo & Sтιтch TV series, which ran from 2003 to 2006.

Her final significant television role came in HBO’s Big Love, where she played Rhonda Volmer, a manipulative teenage bride-in-waiting. She appeared across 32 episodes between 2006 and 2011. 

By 2012, her career drifted, and she stopped appearing in mainstream film and television projects. 

In December 2025, Cathy said she saw a video on Reddit claiming to show her daughter.

The woman in the footage appeared severely emaciated, slumped over with a crack pipe nearby.

Chase’s final significant television role came in HBO’s Big Love, where she played Rhonda Volmer, a manipulative teenage bride-in-waiting. She appeared across 32 episodes between 2006 and 2011; pictured in 2003

Cathy said she did not initially believe it was Daveigh, but later came to that conclusion.

‘In the video, she was in a really bad shape. She was very frail. She was fragile. She was saying no, and trying to push the camera away, and they were shoving it in her face. It was gross.

‘She was obviously drugged out of her mind. She was nothing but skin and bones and I didn’t want to think that was my daughter.’

After seeing the video, Cathy returned to the streets herself, trying to locate her daughter.

From December 2025 onwards, she said she regularly went into Skid Row alone, asking anyone who would speak to her for information.

Cathy said: ‘I will live forever feeling I failed her because they told me the wrong time when she was released [from jail] all those years ago. 

‘I went to pick her up the day after she was released because I didn’t know she was let go early. I can’t stop blaming myself for that. She went back to the streets after she was released.

‘The chaplain at the hospital told me I’m not to blame myself, but I am a mother who loved her daughter so much.

Cathy said she renewed her search for Daveigh on the streets after seeing a video of her in December 2025 that showed her looking severely emaciated

‘And I tried desperately to try to get her help, but you can’t legally force someone who doesn’t want that help.’

Cathy said Daveigh maintained a deep faith, even as addiction took hold in later years.

‘My daughter always had strong faith, and I know during the last few years, it might’ve wavered because of the addiction. However, she had a deep foundation in Christ.’

She also shared handwritten notes from when Daveigh was a child, messages expressing love for her mother and a belief they would always be together.

Cathy still calls her daughter her ‘Sunshine.’