For more than a decade, envelopes from the Screen Actors Guild arrived at the office of John Ryan, the former manager of Daveigh Chase. Inside were residual cheques—payments for the reuse of films and merchandise—earned by a child actress who had voiced Lilo in Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” and played the spectral Samara in the horror hit “The Ring.” The cheques were never collected. According to Mr Ryan, they amounted to millions of dollars, accumulating while their recipient drifted further from the industry that generated them.

On 17 June 2026, Chase died in a Los Angeles hospital at the age of 35. The cause was sepsis following meningitis and severe bloodstream infections, compounded by malnutrition. She had been admitted earlier that month in a state of extreme weight loss. Her death closed a career that began at four and peaked before she was a teenager. In 2002 alone, she provided the English voice of Chihiro in Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” starred as Samara in Gore Verbinski’s “The Ring,” and originated the role of Lilo, for which she won an Annie Award. By 2016, she had retired from acting.

The unclaimed fortune, Mr Ryan explained to American media, stemmed from a contract signed when Chase was eight. Instead of a single salary for “Lilo & Stitch,” her family negotiated a share of revenue from licensed merchandise, theme-park attractions, and residual broadcasts. Payments were to be made gradually over time. But as Chase entered adulthood, she struggled with addiction to heroin and fentanyl, and eventually lived unhoused in the Skid Row district of Los Angeles. Mr Ryan and her half-sister, Gaia Brown, spent months searching for her, hiring a private investigator and, in late 2025, receiving a video that appeared to show her in the area. They arranged a medical intervention and a rehabilitation plan in Costa Rica, but by the time a retrieval team reached the location, she had vanished. “She was too lost,” Mr Ryan said, to ever claim the money.

In her final weeks, a parallel narrative emerged. Roy Hernandez, described as her boyfriend, launched a GoFundMe campaign while Chase was still hospitalised, seeking donations for medical and funeral costs. After her death, the campaign drew thousands of dollars. But Mr Ryan, along with Chase’s father, John Schwallier, and other relatives, publicly urged fans not to contribute. They stated that the family was covering all expenses, including cremation, and that Chase’s own assets were sufficient. The family contacted GoFundMe to flag the campaign. Mr Ryan also alleged that Mr Hernandez had failed to inform the family promptly about her deteriorating condition and was attempting to control the public account of her last days. Mr Hernandez, speaking to the entertainment site TMZ, called the accusations “absolutely false,” insisting the fundraiser was created while Chase was still alive and in critical condition.

The residual cheques, meanwhile, remain unclaimed. Under union rules, Mr Ryan noted, the payments may now pass to her father. In the quiet aftermath, the image that lingers is not of the actress on screen but of those unopened envelopes—a paper trail of a career that continued to generate value long after its owner had slipped out of reach.