Built by Someone Who Lived It
I didn't come to this work from the outside. I struggled with my mental health in high school — enough that I couldn't survive the traditional classroom. I finished high school through independent study at Carlsbad Seaside Academy. I got through. A lot of kids don't.
California Can't Wait is an advocacy campaign — because the problem is a policy failure, and policy failures require political pressure to fix.
This campaign is personal. It is also structural. Both things are true at the same time.
Rory was my best friend from the time we were seven years old. She was one of the most genuinely kind people I have ever known — the kind of person who went out of her way to tell the people in her life exactly how much she cared about them. She had a laugh that lit up every room she walked into.
In 2021, at 24 years old, she died. A death of despair — the kind that happens when someone needed real support for a long time, and the system never provided it.
California Can't Wait exists because of Rory. Because she deserved better. Because the school system she sat in every day could have offered her something — a licensed provider, a trained professional, someone whose job it was to notice — and it didn't. This campaign is about making sure that changes for every kid who comes after her.
"She made it through. She was helping others get through. She deserved so much more time."
This campaign is dedicated to Rory — 1996–2021