Daveigh Chase’s Childhood Friend Amy Castle Launches Grassroots Safety Campaign in Her Honor

Amy Castle, who bonded with Daveigh Chase as a fellow child actor in the early 2000s, is channeling her grief into action. The "Passions" alum is now building a support initiative in her late friend's honor.

Daveigh Chase's legacy lives on through the people she touched. In the weeks since her passing, the "Lilo & Stitch" star's childhood friend, Amy Castle, 36, has launched an initiative in her honor.

Chase and Castle became fast friends as young actors who shared the same manager back in the early 2000s. Close in age, the pair often found themselves at auditions together, building a bond that went far beyond the industry.

"I actually attended the premiere of Lilo & Stitch with her and her mother," Castle recalled. "We were really close, and I remembered back then knowing, 'My gosh, this is my best friend,' because we were also homeschooled [child] actors. That's a very specific niche."

Castle added that Chase served as "an anchor" for her during that chapter of her life. "She was very generous, very kind," she shared. "I have so many positive, beautiful memories about her, who she was, separate from any of the roles that she did."

Castle praised her late friend's effortless gift for acting, describing Chase as a "beaming light of pure spirit" once the cameras stopped rolling.

"She was just beautiful and kind, and not jealous. [She was] not a competitive person, which I'm sure that anybody that's been in this business for any duration of time, it becomes very evident that there is a lot of competition," she said.

"With that being the world that we were in, and to find her being so genuine and kind, I knew back then that she was a very special person, and [being] that special person is why she worked," she continued.

Over time, though, the two lost touch. The "Passions" alum revealed that she last crossed paths with Chase in person back in September 2006, when the two ran into each other at Universal City Walk in Los Angeles.

News of her friend's death last month hit her hard.

"I believe that things absolutely could have been different. Whenever I speak to people about it, they go, 'It's so sad, it's so tragic,' and I say it is sad, and it is tragic, but also it didn't have to be this way," Castle said.

"I knew her from [age] 9 to 16, and I can tell you with certainty the friend that I knew would never have wanted her life to go the way it went. No way. I don't have a shadow of a doubt in my life."

That conviction is what pushed her to start Daveigh's Law, an initiative aimed at connecting young SAG-AFTRA members with support resources in the wake of Chase's death on June 16.

"The purpose of Daveigh's Law is at the same time that you become a SAG-AFTRA member [when] you begin working [in the] union in this business as a minor, you also become part of [a] support [system] where there would be texts and calls and a hotline," she explained.

She continued, "Since I have launched this [on] Instagram and purchased the domain name I have been made aware that there are some services that I didn't even know of that would have been great, not necessarily from SAG itself, but from the Young Arts Academy."

"I'm thinking, 'How great,' but also I know that Daveigh did not know about any of that," Castle added. "It is crucial that we bridge the gap between child actor and adult human."

Though the grassroots campaign remains in its early stages, it's steadily building momentum, and Castle knows that lasting change won't come quickly.

"And I'm so 100% committed to this for the long haul, and not just for [Chase], but for every person that started working as a child that didn't have the support or was not protected," said Castle.

Daveigh was initially believed to have died from meningitis and blood infections that led to sepsis, causing her body to shut down, according to her reported boyfriend Roy Hernandez.

Her cause of death was later revealed to be AIDS and chronic polysubstance use, among other conditions.

At the time of her death, Daveigh was living on the streets of Los Angeles, having lost contact with her family — who only reconnected with her after she died.