This story originally appeared on Them.
The County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s office announced on Monday that actress Daveigh Chase — who starred in films such as Donnie Darko, The Ring and lent her voice to Spirited Away and Lilo & Stitch — died due to complications related to an AIDS diagnosis. Chase was 35 at the time of her death, which occurred on June 16.
While the coroner listed the primary cause of her death as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, the full name for the acronym AIDS, chronic polysubstance use — the use of several different drugs within a short period of time — was also listed as a “significant condition.”
Chase’s father, John David Schwallier, had previously told the New York Times that his daughter had died in the hospital due to bacterial meningitis and a blood infection. Her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, corroborated to TMZ that she had sepsis. Those immediate causes are not incompatible with an AIDS diagnosis, given that AIDS is a designation meaning that a person has a weakened immune system.
Schwallier also told the New York Times that, prior to her death, she had been homeless. He also said that Chase had used drugs since she was about 13 years old and that they hadn’t spoken since she was 19.
HIV and homelessness have a reciprocal relationship: homelessness is considered a major risk factor for acquiring HIV, while having HIV also puts people at greater risk of being without a home. Unhoused people who acquire HIV also often have worse health outcomes than those who are housed and living with HIV.
Chase stopped acting in 2016 and was charged with riding in a stolen BMW in 2017 and with possession of a controlled substance a year later.
Chase was born in 1990 in Las Vegas, but a few weeks after her birth, her family moved her to Albany, Oregon. She was home-schooled and won the Little Miss Oregon pageant at 6 years old, per the New York Times.
Prior to her death, Hernandez set up a GoFundMe in which he described Chase as having a “difficult childhood” and a “painful falling out with her family.”
“When we met, I promised to protect her and give her the love and comfort she deserved,” he wrote. “Together, we found moments of happiness and hope.”
Hernandez wrote about Chase’s diagnoses with meningitis and said that doctors had told her she did “not have much time left.”
“Now, more than ever, I want to give her that sense of home and peace in her final days,” he wrote. “I understand we all go through things, but if you can help, I will be really grateful for anything. And if you can only give a prayer, I will take that too.”
