Speaker 1: This episode contains descriptions of intimate partner violence. Please listen
Speaker 1: with care.
Speaker 2: My name is Lali rolon By. They coming Lally, so
Speaker 2: a lot of people like it. Ever hit me as
Speaker 2: Sally and they were like, oh, yeah, Lally. She went
Speaker 2: to school with her.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The person that Lollie went to school with was Daisy.
Speaker 1: They met in the seventh grade when they get home
Speaker 1: room together and.
Speaker 2: For some reason we ended up sitting in the same
Speaker 2: table and we ended up talking, you know, and to me,
Speaker 2: she was really beautiful. She had beautiful eyes. Her eyes
Speaker 2: or what caught my attention. I was like wow, and
Speaker 2: we started getting close. She was so like nice, caring.
Speaker 2: She would always ask me like, you know, like those
Speaker 2: type of going friends, how are you doing, how are
Speaker 2: you feeling? And like when I would talk to her,
Speaker 2: it was all like smiles, you know, like laughs and
Speaker 2: smiles and everything.
Speaker 3: And then we ended up getting closer in eighth grade
Speaker 3: because I.
Speaker 1: Had her for keea junior High was more than a
Speaker 1: decade ago for Lollie. She's in her early twenties now.
Speaker 1: She's got wavy brown hair parted down the middle, and
Speaker 1: on the day that we met, she wore a Whitney
Speaker 1: Houston t shirt. She wants to be a nurse someday,
Speaker 1: delivering babies, but for the time being, she delivers something else,
Speaker 1: food from local restaurants that's in between classes at East
Speaker 1: La College. I first reached out to Lali on TikTok.
Speaker 1: Her profile is filled with funny, candid videos, nothing too edited,
Speaker 1: nothing too trendy, just snippets of everyday life. A friend
Speaker 1: walking around with a paper bag over her head, soccer
Speaker 1: teammates banging on plastic bottles to make an ASMR drum beat.
Speaker 1: Lalie and I met up at a coffee shop in
Speaker 1: Huntington Park. It's a working class suburb just a few
Speaker 1: miles south of downtown Los Angeles. We sat at an
Speaker 1: outdoor table on Pacific Boulevard, the main shopping district. It's
Speaker 1: filled with signs and Spanish advertising, tax lawyers and passport photos.
Speaker 1: There are huge, glittery boutiques that sell tuxedos and princess
Speaker 1: like Kinsaniera addresses. The business is here cater to a
Speaker 1: population of mostly immigrants, like Lolly's family they're from Tebasco, Mexico,
Speaker 1: and Daisy's family back when they lived here, they're from
Speaker 1: Mexico City. Daisy and Lolly bonded instantly. They had the
Speaker 1: kind of closeness where they could spend hours together, sometimes
Speaker 1: without even saying a word. But there were times when
Speaker 1: Lollie wondered if there was more going on with Daisy
Speaker 1: than she let on.
Speaker 2: I feel like she never really told me what was
Speaker 2: going on, deep deep inside. Maybe she didn't want people
Speaker 2: to know him. Maybe she wanted to make it seem
Speaker 2: like she was always fine, you know, because that's what.
Speaker 3: She seemed like. It seemed like she was always okay.
Speaker 3: It seemed like she was always happy.
Speaker 1: This idea that Daisy always put on a smile no
Speaker 1: matter what it was something that came up a lot
Speaker 1: when I spoke to her friends.
Speaker 2: She could have been going through problems and she'd put
Speaker 2: yours before hers. You know, she wouldn't even tell you
Speaker 2: about hers to help you with yours. So I feel
Speaker 2: like that shows a lot. There's not a lot of
Speaker 2: people that would do that. You know, a lot of
Speaker 2: people just focus on them, like all my problems, my problems,
Speaker 2: and when you talking about yours, like, oh no, not
Speaker 2: right now, like I'm talking about mine.
Speaker 1: And Lolly and Daisy drifted apart in high school, Lollie
Speaker 1: went to one school, Daisy to another. But Daisy always
Speaker 1: stayed on Lolly's mind.
Speaker 2: But that love that I had for her from elementary,
Speaker 2: middle school, whatever, is always there.
Speaker 3: You know, It's always gonna stay there.
Speaker 2: Even just because of when I suparate, way doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that I'm ever gonna forget about her.
Speaker 3: Because even even.
Speaker 1: Daisy and Lolly went ended up having a chance encounter
Speaker 1: in high school. In this encounter, it shed light on
Speaker 1: Daisy's inner life, on one of the difficult things that
Speaker 1: she was struggling with in the years after they lost touch.
Speaker 1: It still haunts Lolly today.
Speaker 2: When I found out what happened, That's when I was
Speaker 2: like down like, I felt guilty.
Speaker 3: I felt remorse. When I was like down like, I
Speaker 3: wondered if I could have helped her.
Speaker 1: I'm Jen Swan from London Audio. iHeart Radio an executive
Speaker 1: producer Para Selton. This is My Friend Daisy, Episode three,
Speaker 1: Smile Now I'll cry Later. Valerie Ariano was two grades
Speaker 1: above Daisy. She was a sophomore in high school when
Speaker 1: Daisy was in the eighth grade.
Speaker 4: She was still a little kid, still with her little
Speaker 4: She hadn't had her hair died yet, and I would
Speaker 4: see her like in the school uniform. She was so
Speaker 4: sweet and innocent.
Speaker 1: It's possible that the two might never have met if
Speaker 1: Valerie's best friend didn't end up getting pregnant. The father
Speaker 1: was Daisy's older brother.
Speaker 4: I was worried for my friend, you know, having a
Speaker 4: kid so young, because you were like fifteen or sixteen,
Speaker 4: and Daisy was I think barely thirteen. So I did
Speaker 4: worry about my friend going through something like that so young.
Speaker 4: But I think I felt a little bit calmer seeing
Speaker 4: that she had Daisy there. She was living with her
Speaker 4: at the time, and I felt like Daisy kind of
Speaker 4: in a way became like another sister for her, you know.
Speaker 1: When the baby was born in the fall of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Daisy embraced being an aunt. Later she would even get
Speaker 1: a tattoo of the baby's name. Daisy adored the baby's
Speaker 1: mother too. She got a septum ring just like her,
Speaker 1: and started dying.
Speaker 5: Her hair like her too.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure she was already interested in that stuff,
Speaker 4: but I think living with my friend, and because my
Speaker 4: friend would dye her hair all the time too, she'll
Speaker 4: have it like so burnt from like dying you red,
Speaker 4: having a blonde, dying of blue, green, purple.
Speaker 1: I'm laughing because I can relate. My hair was also
Speaker 1: fried in high school. Honestly, my brain was probably a
Speaker 1: little fried too, from all the bleach I put on
Speaker 1: my head, followed by clumps of manic panic and neon shades.
Speaker 4: And I started seeing Daisy dress up like tat too,
Speaker 4: and she looks so cool. And I remember she would
Speaker 4: dye her hair like all these different kinds of colors,
Speaker 4: and at one point she had a blonde, and she
Speaker 4: kind of reminded me of like Courtney Love. I don't
Speaker 4: know if some people take that as a fence or compliment.
Speaker 4: She looked really cute, though.
Speaker 1: Valeries, in her mid twenties, was short, curly bangs and
Speaker 1: thick care that when we met she wore in two braids.
Speaker 1: I had messaged Valerie on Facebook after noticing that she
Speaker 1: donated to the GoFundMe that Daisy's mother had started to
Speaker 1: help with her funeral costs. Valerie's Facebook page is like
Speaker 1: a community bulletin board. She often reposts flyers about missing
Speaker 1: people and lost pets, PSAs about shelter animals that need homes,
Speaker 1: and in person she was just as sensitive and caring
Speaker 1: as her online profile suggested. A few years back, she
Speaker 1: told me she started studying sociology at cal State LA
Speaker 1: because she wanted to work in homeless services. Then she
Speaker 1: got disillusion and switched over to art education. She wants
Speaker 1: to get her teaching credential someday to work in a
Speaker 1: field where she can really.
Speaker 5: Have an impact and make a difference.
Speaker 1: We sat at a picnic table outside the Civic Center
Speaker 1: in Huntington Park. That's where Valerie grew up and where
Speaker 1: she still lives, and she told me about the first
Speaker 1: time she met Daisy, about how she watched as Daisy's
Speaker 1: style and musical tastes began to evolve.
Speaker 5: Go'll see her.
Speaker 4: Wear like Nirvana's shirts. I would be wearing those shirts
Speaker 4: of the Smiths, and she would ask me like, oh,
Speaker 4: where did you buy that shirt?
Speaker 3: Not I would tell her like, oh.
Speaker 4: I'm Pacific nearby walking distance, And I started seeing her
Speaker 4: wear shirts of the Smiths too.
Speaker 1: With her tough exterior, Daisy sometimes gave off the ear
Speaker 1: of someone who was unfazed self a shirt, but underneath
Speaker 1: it all, she was going through a lot. It seems
Speaker 1: like she was probably dealing with a lot of uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Her parents were getting a divorce after nearly two decades
Speaker 1: of marriage. It was finalized in the summer of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: and based on what I've heard from Daisy's mother, Susie,
Speaker 1: it must have been hard on Daisy. I haven't been
Speaker 1: able to reach her father. I asked his father, Juan
Speaker 1: de lo Oh, to help us get in touch her back.
Speaker 5: But from what.
Speaker 1: Susie told me, Daisy used to be very close with
Speaker 1: her father. A daddy's girl is how she put it.
Speaker 1: She was really like this with her dad, she told me,
Speaker 1: crossing her index and middle fingers together. But after the split,
Speaker 1: Susie and Daisy got a lot closer. They ended up
Speaker 1: moving in with Daisy's grandparents in Compton. It was a
Speaker 1: tight squeeze, but it was at least familiar. They'd all
Speaker 1: lived there for a time when Daisy and her siblings
Speaker 1: were younger. Susie told me that in order to maintain
Speaker 1: a sense of normalcy, she decided not to take her
Speaker 1: kids out of the schools they were already enrolled in.
Speaker 1: Now Daisy had to commute to school from a different city,
Speaker 1: Huntingdon Park, was a straight shot on the bus eight
Speaker 1: miles north along Beach Boulevard until it turned into Pacific.
Speaker 1: The drive took a half hour by car, or sometimes
Speaker 1: an hour on public transit. It's hard to imagine this
Speaker 1: was an easy transition. Daisy was living far from her friends,
Speaker 1: her school, her community, and now she had to navigate
Speaker 1: a new living arrangement with extend family members she didn't
Speaker 1: always get along with. But around this time, when Daisy
Speaker 1: was a sophomore in high school, she began dating somebody
Speaker 1: that seemed to bring her comfort, at least in the beginning.
Speaker 1: When she introduced her mother to her boyfriend, she said
Speaker 1: that he was seventeen, just two years older than she was,
Speaker 1: and at first Susie had no reason to doubt that.
Speaker 1: Victor Sosa looked like your average teenage skateboarder. Could carried
Speaker 1: a skateboard with him wherever he went. He had thick
Speaker 1: eyebrows and a thin mustache. He sometimes grew his dark
Speaker 1: lady hair past his shoulders. But the thing that everybody
Speaker 1: noticed about him was his ear lobes. They'd been stretched
Speaker 1: engaged with jewelry. It looked like big black discs. His
Speaker 1: appearance didn't bother, Susie, she was actually suspicious of him
Speaker 1: for another reason. He was too quiet, she told me,
Speaker 1: And pretty soon she began to notice things about him
Speaker 1: that made her suspect he was a lot older than seventeen.
Speaker 1: I saw tattoos on him, she told me, a lot
Speaker 1: of tattoos, and I'm like, how old is he?
Speaker 5: For real?
Speaker 1: Susie would later discover that her daughter had lied to
Speaker 1: her about her boyfriend's age. He was already twenty one
Speaker 1: when Daisy was fifteen. Susie had always felt like she
Speaker 1: and her daughter run a team, but after Victor came
Speaker 1: into the picture, she no longer felt that way. It
Speaker 1: seemed like everything had changed. Susie had been working long
Speaker 1: hours to make ends meet. She was seeing less and
Speaker 1: less of her daughter, and when they did hang out,
Speaker 1: Daisy never wanted to talk about Victor. Susie told me.
Speaker 1: A number of Daisy's friends told me the same thing,
Speaker 1: that Victor was a topic that was always off limits.
Speaker 1: They didn't know much about him, and they weren't even
Speaker 1: really sure how the two of them met, but they
Speaker 1: knew better than.
Speaker 5: To ask about it. When they did, Daisy.
Speaker 1: Sometimes told them that he wasn't worth talking about but
Speaker 1: Victor clearly didn't feel that way about Daisy. It was
Speaker 1: like he wanted the whole world to know about his relationship,
Speaker 1: because on Instagram he filled his grid with photos of
Speaker 1: her Daisy with her hair bleached blonde and then dyed
Speaker 1: jack lantern orange daisy and fishnets climbing a fence, Daisy
Speaker 1: and fishnets on a beach, Daisy in an antique shop,
Speaker 1: a little yellow daisy propped in the buttonhole of her
Speaker 1: jeene jacket. His Instagram contained a few photos of himself too.
Speaker 1: There was one photo that showed off his tattoos on
Speaker 1: his leg, an image of Jason the Killer from Friday
Speaker 1: the thirteenth, two blades arranged like crossbones under a hockey
Speaker 1: mask across as abdomen, an outline of the Grim Reaper.
Speaker 1: It seemed like he had a thing for horror movies,
Speaker 1: right down to the clothes he wore. He even sometimes
Speaker 1: dressed like Freddy Krueger in a red striped sweater and
Speaker 1: bowler hat. His look sometimes freaked people out, like Jose Tayas,
Speaker 1: the apartment manag at Daisy's building. He'd sometimes see Victor
Speaker 1: hanging around the apartment complex with Daisy and he was
Speaker 1: not into it. I see his black grass and looked
Speaker 1: like a shadow.
Speaker 5: Looked like a different along the people.
Speaker 1: He dressed in all black, like a shadow, Jose said.
Speaker 1: Then he compared Victor to the Undertaker, the wrestler who
Speaker 1: entered the ring in a black leather trench coat and
Speaker 1: top hat. Daisy's style had become a little theatrical too.
Speaker 1: Her hair was cut short and asymmetrical, and her makeup
Speaker 1: was dark and bold. She looked a little like the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties punk singer Susi Sue. By her junior year
Speaker 1: of high school, she had changed her looks so much
Speaker 1: that Lolly, her friend from middle school, had to do
Speaker 1: a double take when she spotted Daisy on the bus.
Speaker 2: I only recognized her because of her eyes. Her appearance
Speaker 2: was completely different, her hair was dye, her makeup was
Speaker 2: like at that moment, to me, it was like a
Speaker 2: little like I thought about it crazy and in a sense,
Speaker 2: you know, but now that I think about like, it's
Speaker 2: not crazy.
Speaker 3: It was just her expressive how she felt, you know.
Speaker 1: She and Daisy hadn't seen each other in yours and
Speaker 1: Lollly wasn't even sure if it was really Daisy.
Speaker 5: She was seeing on a.
Speaker 2: Type of person that if you look familiar to me,
Speaker 2: I'll approach and I'm like, hey, are you this person?
Speaker 3: I think I know you? And that's what I did.
Speaker 2: I approached her and I was like Daisy, and then
Speaker 2: she was like she looked at me and she turned around.
Speaker 3: She was like Lally, So we're all like, oh, we
Speaker 3: recognize each other.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Lolly and Daisy had a lot to catch up on
Speaker 1: and they only had the length of a bus ride
Speaker 1: to do it. Lollie didn't want to waste any time,
Speaker 1: so she went straight to the big questions on.
Speaker 2: The type of friends that when you catch up, how
Speaker 2: you been, what are you up to? Are you dating anyone?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Like those are the main questions for me to know,
Speaker 2: like how are you doing emotionally physically and love life?
Speaker 3: Like are you someone? Are you happy? Are you single?
Speaker 2: Like yeah, and she was just like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 2: have a boyfriend her name is he's older than me.
Speaker 2: And then she used to me like, oh, like sometimes
Speaker 2: she's just a little processive, you know, like she like
Speaker 2: kind of downd it down a little bit.
Speaker 3: But that's why I didn't think much of it, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if her friends knew what was
Speaker 2: going on with Victor.
Speaker 3: I feel like maybe it should have known.
Speaker 1: It sounded like a lot of Bagh school relationships, including
Speaker 1: her own, full of drama and security and intensity.
Speaker 2: I think much of it because I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: like when in high school, we all have problems with
Speaker 2: the partners, you know, Like at that moment, I was
Speaker 2: a little possessive as well, not like you know, like
Speaker 2: crazy posessive, but I do suffer from depression and like
Speaker 2: I have a HD, I have a little bit of anger.
Speaker 3: She was so like, it just takes time to work
Speaker 3: on like yourself.
Speaker 2: So I kind of understood her, and I was, okay,
Speaker 2: maybe he just is going through a little face.
Speaker 3: Maybe he has to work on it. So they didn't
Speaker 3: think much of it.
Speaker 1: But then during that past ride days they can fight
Speaker 1: it a little more.
Speaker 2: And then she just told me that she wasn't sure
Speaker 2: about it because of how he was, you know, he
Speaker 2: told She told.
Speaker 3: Me that she didn't like how he was sometimes.
Speaker 2: That he will get like a little violent, and that
Speaker 2: she was like, you know, thinking what she do and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. And then I just told her, like
Speaker 2: you ever need advice, you need help.
Speaker 3: Let me know.
Speaker 1: Lolly was concerned, but she knew that Daisy had a
Speaker 1: close circle of friends at her high school, a big
Speaker 1: support system. What she didn't know is that she was
Speaker 1: one of the few people, maybe even the only one,
Speaker 1: who Daisy talked about her relationship with. Maybe in hindsight,
Speaker 1: it made a strange sort of sense.
Speaker 3: Maybe she told me because I didn't know the guy.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I feel like maybe that's what she told me because
Speaker 2: she knew that I wasn't gonna go and tell other
Speaker 2: people or they said, is having problems with her boyfriend,
Speaker 2: because I didn't even know the people that she wasn't
Speaker 2: in now with, you know.
Speaker 1: But Lollie didn't know many of the details and the
Speaker 1: truth of what was really going on. It was so
Speaker 1: much worse than she I have imagined. One night during
Speaker 1: the summer before Daisy's senior year of high school, her grandfather,
Speaker 1: Juan de Lo, was asleep on the couch. Daisy's younger
Speaker 1: brother began screaming at him to wake up.
Speaker 5: You see build me lazy okay.
Speaker 1: Wan said that his grandson shouted, Grandpa, Grandpa, it's Victor.
Speaker 5: He hit Daisy.
Speaker 1: Daisy's mother, Susie was in the car on her way home.
Speaker 1: She got a call from her youngest son and heard
Speaker 1: him shouting he hit her. He hit her with a skateboard.
Speaker 1: When Susie got to the apartment complex, she saw blood
Speaker 1: on the ground, but Daisy was nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1: She had taken off running, just like Victor. To Susie,
Speaker 1: it seems like Daisy was embarrassed, embarrassed that her younger
Speaker 1: brother had witnessed what had happened. She was such a mature,
Speaker 1: rough girl. Susie told me that for her, that was
Speaker 1: embarrassing that she was getting hit by this person. Daisy's
Speaker 1: mother and her grandfather and her little brother began running
Speaker 1: after Daisy and Victor, chasing them down the street. Victor
Speaker 1: eventually got away when they caught up with Daisy. She
Speaker 1: was distraught the public spectacle of her family chasing her
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend down the street. It probably added to
Speaker 1: her embarrassment, and the last thing she wanted to do
Speaker 1: was to talk about what had happened, or even to
Speaker 1: seek treatment for it.
Speaker 5: Susie pleaded with her daughter.
Speaker 1: She wanted to see the wound on her head, but
Speaker 1: Daisy wouldn't show her. She was covering it with a hat.
Speaker 1: You need stitches, Susie told her.
Speaker 5: But Daisy did not want to go to the hospital.
Speaker 1: It seemed like she was afraid of reporting the assault,
Speaker 1: afraid of drawing even more attention to her injury and
Speaker 1: what that might mean for her relationship. Finally, Susie made
Speaker 1: a promise. She told her daughter that she wouldn't call
Speaker 1: the police. She was bluffing. She had actually already called
Speaker 1: the police. Problem was the police never showed up, she
Speaker 1: told me. Daisy finally agreed to let her mother take
Speaker 1: her to the emergency room, but when they got there,
Speaker 1: Susie told me Daisy insisted to the medical staff that
Speaker 1: nothing had happened, no assault had taken place. California law
Speaker 1: requires registered nurses to make a report anytime they suspect
Speaker 1: a patient has been injured as a result of abuse,
Speaker 1: and that's regardless of whether the patient consents to it,
Speaker 1: So it's unclear why a report was not taken, but
Speaker 1: because there was no report made. This account of alleged
Speaker 1: assault isn't based on any sort of official record. It's
Speaker 1: based on my interviews with Daisy's mother, her grandfather, and
Speaker 1: her youngest brother, who confirmed to me that he witnessed it. Jeffrey,
Speaker 1: the teenager whose grandmother lived in the building, also witnessed
Speaker 1: the attack, according to his mother. After Daisy got stitched
Speaker 1: up at the hospital, Susie went to the La County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's station in Compton. Since the hospital wouldn't file a
Speaker 1: police report, she figured she'd go to the police herself.
Speaker 1: But Susie said they told her, quote the same crap,
Speaker 1: They can't make a report if the victim doesn't come forward.
Speaker 5: Susie was baffled.
Speaker 1: Her daughter was a miner, and she'd been injured so
Speaker 1: badly that she needed stitches. Wasn't that enough to file
Speaker 1: a police report. Susie was not willing to take no
Speaker 1: for an answer. She went to a different law enforcement agency,
Speaker 1: the Huntington Park Police Department, in the city where Daisy
Speaker 1: attended high school, but again, she said she was turned away.
Speaker 1: The police department declined to file a report or press
Speaker 1: charges without the cooperation of the victim. I asked the
Speaker 1: Huntington Park Police Department about this. A media spokesperson said
Speaker 1: they don't comment on incidents involving miners, but a lieutenant
Speaker 1: did tell me that this kind of situation quote, it's
Speaker 1: not really spelled out in a policy. He described it
Speaker 1: as a gray area, meaning if a parent comes in
Speaker 1: to report a crime against their child and the child
Speaker 1: doesn't want to provide a statement, police might not be
Speaker 1: able to gather information.
Speaker 5: For a police report.
Speaker 1: When Daisy returned in the fall for her senior year
Speaker 1: of high school, she was called into the principal's office.
Speaker 1: When she got there, school administrators wanted to ask her
Speaker 1: about the alleged assault. She said she didn't know what
Speaker 1: they were talking about, and that's when, according to Susie,
Speaker 1: Daisy was told that they had already interviewed her younger
Speaker 1: brother and he said the attack did happen. Was she
Speaker 1: calling her brother a liar? This confrontation, it was all
Speaker 1: a set up. It had been masterminded by Susie. She
Speaker 1: told me that she had approched school administrators for help
Speaker 1: in making a record of the alleged assault. These administrators
Speaker 1: did not comment on or corroborate this incident, citing student confidentiality.
Speaker 1: According to Susie, her daughter cracked under the pressure. She
Speaker 1: told them, no, my brother is not a liar, and yes,
Speaker 1: what he says did happen.
Speaker 5: Victor was banned from entering the.
Speaker 1: Campus as a result, Susie told me, and she also
Speaker 1: banned him from entering her home. And it was roughly
Speaker 1: around this time, maybe just a few weeks earlier, that
Speaker 1: Victor posted this really cryptic.
Speaker 5: Image on Instagram.
Speaker 1: It was this old school tattoo style illustration of this
Speaker 1: guy holding two different theater masks.
Speaker 5: Maybe you've seen this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It's like a happy mask in one hand and a
Speaker 1: sad mask in the other, and there's this text across
Speaker 1: it that says smile now, cry later, and then the
Speaker 1: caption says not allowed to see my girlfriend no more.
Speaker 1: And then there's this hand clapping emoji and an hourglass emoji.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is really ominous, Like was it some
Speaker 1: kind of threat of Tie running out? It's impossible to
Speaker 1: know for sure what he meant by this, and it's
Speaker 1: also impossible to know how exactly this whole experience affected Daisy.
Speaker 1: It had to have been incredibly difficult, and it seems
Speaker 1: like at that point, you know, she was already struggling
Speaker 1: with this relationship, with whether to stay, how to go,
Speaker 1: And I just wonder, is this the thing that made
Speaker 1: her see clearly gravely I need to get out. But
Speaker 1: getting out of a bad relationship, it takes time. In
Speaker 1: Daisy's case, it happened about two and a half years
Speaker 1: after the alleged assault with the skateboard. It was early
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. We were driving. Susie told me she
Speaker 1: was like, by the way I broke up with what's's face.
Speaker 1: Susie told me that Daisy didn't even like to mention
Speaker 1: Victor by name because she knew her mother disliked himself
Speaker 1: so much. Inside, Susie said, she was jumping up and
Speaker 1: down at this news, but she didn't want to show
Speaker 1: Daisy how excited she was. Teenagers are weird, Susie said.
Speaker 1: The more you tell them not to do something, the
Speaker 1: more they want to do it, and vice versa. So
Speaker 1: Susie kept driving. She tried her best to hide her
Speaker 1: smile and act casual. She kept her hands on the
Speaker 1: steering wheel, she looked straight ahead. And besides, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the first time that Daisy and Victor had broken up,
Speaker 1: but something about this time felt different, more real or final.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was the fact that Daisy seemed like she
Speaker 1: had so many more options in her life now. She'd
Speaker 1: made friends in her college classes, she'd gotten a job,
Speaker 1: at CBS, and she had coworkers that she really liked.
Speaker 1: There was something else that Daisy did that silently suggested
Speaker 1: this breakup was the real thing. She deleted all of
Speaker 1: her photos of Victor on Instagram. One of Daisy's friends
Speaker 1: told me that she clocked this immediately. Daisy never said
Speaker 1: a word to her about the breakup. She didn't need to.
Speaker 1: Her social media said it all. Her and Victor were over.
Speaker 1: The oldest remaining post on Daisy's grid after she deleted
Speaker 1: everything else, was a sealthie. It was posted on February third,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, which was roughly around the time she
Speaker 1: broke up with Victor. The photo didn't show her face,
Speaker 1: but it did show a purple key hanging from a
Speaker 1: chain around her neck, a moon and bat tattoo on
Speaker 1: her clavicle, a spider web inked across her shoulder. The
Speaker 1: caption on its way to happiness. At the time that
Speaker 1: she posted this image and caption, it was when her
Speaker 1: break at East de Lehih College, But Daisy was not
Speaker 1: taking a break. She was enrolled in a course called
Speaker 1: Management for Small Business Entrepreneurship. In other words, she was
Speaker 1: on her grind. She wanted to own her own salon
Speaker 1: one day, and this was one step along the way.
Speaker 1: And this class was intense. What was normally four months
Speaker 1: of instruction was crammed into just five weeks.
Speaker 6: Some students in the first three weeks so drop out.
Speaker 6: What they realized, like, oh, I thought it was just
Speaker 6: going to be an easy, five week, easier class.
Speaker 1: That's Frank Ageray. He's the chair of easter La College's
Speaker 1: Business Administration program. He's got dark, slipped back hair, and
Speaker 1: he wore polo shirt printed with the college's mascot, a Husky.
Speaker 6: Our business administration degree is one of the most popular
Speaker 6: degrees on campus, and so we're also one of the
Speaker 6: biggest community colleges in the state, maybe like the third
Speaker 6: largest in the country.
Speaker 1: Frank didn't get to know Daisy well. This class was
Speaker 1: only five weeks long and it was also completely online.
Speaker 1: This was still less than a year into the pandemic,
Speaker 1: so that was the norm. But he did try to
Speaker 1: get to know all of his students to understand the
Speaker 1: reasoning for taking his class, and one way that he
Speaker 1: did that was by asking them all to submit a
Speaker 1: questionnaire to tell him about their background and interests, to
Speaker 1: name something unique about themselves. Of course, I wanted to
Speaker 1: know what Daisy had written in hers Well, I can read.
Speaker 3: You what she said here.
Speaker 6: She has a picture.
Speaker 3: She's my Daisy Dela.
Speaker 7: Oh.
Speaker 6: The reason I'm taking this course is because I would
Speaker 6: like more knowledge how small businesses run. On my personal
Speaker 6: entrepreneurship opportunities. My plans are to get a bachelor's or
Speaker 6: master's in business.
Speaker 5: I do plan on.
Speaker 6: Transferring to CLA, Stanford, you see San Diego, and my
Speaker 6: free time I enjoy drawing, skating and reading something unique
Speaker 6: about me as I am creative.
Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1: I didn't really she wanted to go to bachelor's and
Speaker 1: go to Stanford or UCLA or you see San Diego.
Speaker 3: And do you mind if that's what her photo.
Speaker 5: Looked like, because I know she changed her hair color
Speaker 5: all the time.
Speaker 3: Can I see? Yeah? Of course?
Speaker 5: Oh wow, I hadn't seen that photo.
Speaker 1: Okay, so she has kind of the blonde in the
Speaker 1: front and the.
Speaker 5: Black on the sides. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: I stared at this photo of this nineteen year old
Speaker 1: woman with so many dreams, so much life ahead of her.
Speaker 5: I thought about how the.
Speaker 1: World was just beginning to open itself up to her
Speaker 1: to become so much bigger.
Speaker 5: I thought about how she had.
Speaker 1: Recently made this big decision to leave a partner who,
Speaker 1: by many accounts had been abusive to her, and how
Speaker 1: difficult that must have been. I thought about the injustice
Speaker 1: of it all. Just three weeks after this class ended,
Speaker 1: her life would be taken from her and to a
Speaker 1: lot of people who knew Daisy. It seemed like the
Speaker 1: cops were willing to let her case go cold, not
Speaker 1: if they could help it.
Speaker 5: Next time. On My Friend Daisy, it was hard.
Speaker 8: And especially because where it happened. It was like where
Speaker 8: she was living, and it's like what, like how can
Speaker 8: it happen? And nobody sawn the thing, nobody heard anything.
Speaker 7: Hi, everyone, this is Paris. Thanks for listening to My
Speaker 7: Friend Daisy. If you are someone you love is experiencing abuse,
Speaker 7: you are not alone. Help is available twenty four to seven.
Speaker 7: Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline for free confidential support.
Speaker 7: Call eight hundred seven nine to nine seven two three three,
Speaker 7: text start to eight eight seven eight eight, or visit
Speaker 7: the hotline dot org your safety matters reach out today.
Speaker 1: My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with
Speaker 1: support from Sony Music.
Speaker 5: Entertainment.
Speaker 1: It's reported, written and executive produced by me Jen Swan.
Speaker 1: I'm also your host. Executive producers for London Audio are
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our
Speaker 1: associate producer is Zoe Coulkin. Production assistants and translations by
Speaker 1: Miguel Contreras, sound design, composing and mixing by Hans Dale
Speaker 1: she Our fact checker is Fendel Fulton. Our head of
Speaker 1: production is Sammy Allison, and our production manager is Tamika
Speaker 1: Balance Colosny. Special thanks to Steve Akerman, Emily Rossick and
Speaker 1: Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orley Greenberg at Uta,
Speaker 1: and Jen Ortiz at The Cut