Chapter 2 — Roaring Goddess 37:15

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Amanda C. Riley had a year of firsts. First time creating a blog, first time becoming a mother, first time diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, first time beating cancer, and first cancer relapse. Amanda had thought she'd won, but only a few months later, an email was sent around to family and friends. We are reaching out to all of you to share some sad news today.

Unfortunately, we found out a few days back that Amanda's Hodgkin's lymphoma has returned. Amanda's goal with her blog was to... Not only keep friends and family in the loop, but serve as a resource to all those newly diagnosed. But it wasn't Amanda that broke the news to her followers about her relapse. It was her mother, Peggy. She was invited to post a guest blog, and it was titled, The Roaring Goddess.

Amanda invited me a week ago or so to start contributing to her blog. How is it that the universe could dare threaten to take our beautiful daughter from us with this disease? Screw you, cancer. I've been lashing out like an angry lioness since August with the relapse of Amanda's Hodgkin's lymphoma. I'm Charlie Webster. You're listening to Scamander. Scamander.

Peggy was clearly struggling with her daughter Amanda's cancer. The blog started to become an outlet for the whole family, and it was a way for others to support too.

One major supporter was a woman called Rebecca Caffiro, who worked with Peggy. I was working in real estate. I was getting divorced. I was looking to make a change, get back out of Vegas. And at the time, I had a really good relationship with my uncle then, who were also in real estate. And they were working on an idea, and they had approached me about coming and working with them. They were looking at the opportunity of buying homes at auction.

And they had somehow been introduced to a woman who was working at a company where they were doing that. And that was Peggy. I think I met her at like a Starbucks in Riverside, which is where she lived and which is where the business was going to be based out of, is Riverside County. Riverside is about two hours east of Los Angeles, California. We just instantly hit it off, instantly got along. I loved her vibe. She was personal. She was kind. She laughed.

I was excited to be able to work under Peggy or kind of as Peggy's partner. I moved to Riverside. Peggy had been there for, as far as I know, like her entire life. And I knew no one. I moved out there. I got my apartment. And basically all I did was work. I just didn't have a social circle or anyone in person outside of Peggy. So everything I asked, like every recommendation I asked for, like my hairdresser was from Peggy because I didn't have any knowledge of the area.

Peggy was in this kind of mom or like adopted aunt role for me. I mean, she was the one that I went to whenever something was happening. And I felt like I had that relationship, not just because I worked with her, but because she had opened herself up to be that person for me. Rebecca became a part of Amanda's close circle after Peggy introduced them to each other. The first time I met Amanda, we were going to our favorite sushi restaurant in Riverside.

We were meeting her and her fiancé at the time, Corey, just to meet them. And I'd heard about Amanda. Peggy had always told me, "Oh, you two would get along so well. Like, you just would totally be friends. Love each other. I can't wait for you to meet." So I met Amanda, and, you know, she was fabulous. Like, warm, funny, interesting, like, all of the things that I would look for. And I said, "It's too bad you don't live in Riverside anymore, 'cause I have, like, no friends here."

Corey seemed nice, but Amanda and I were sitting next to each other, so we were talking, talking, talking. So I didn't spend a lot of time talking to Corey that day. They just seemed like a great couple. I mean, I knew that he was divorced and had a daughter, and it just seemed like an ideal scenario to have Amanda as this little girl's stepmom. Everything that Peggy ever said was really positive. She seemed to really like him. She thought they were a great match. She was very excited for them to get married.

I do remember some conversation about his ex-wife. She, you know, did allude or did say something about the fact that he had a challenging relationship with his ex-wife. And I'm like, I was literally freshly divorced, so that didn't seem out of character. That I was just like, really glad I didn't have a child with my ex. We met Amanda's hubby, Corey, at her college graduation long before they were more than friends. That mother's intuition kicked in, and the fairy tale is history.

Their family had this funny thing about like labels. Jassa, his daughter, she called her her bonus daughter, like instead of stepdaughter, bonus daughter. Amanda loves sharing their life with her bonus daughter, who took my joke nickname and ran with it. Peggy wasn't grandma, she was goddess. That was, you know, self-anointed. You think goddess sounds egotistical?

I couldn't give a crap. Amanda was bonus mom and it was her bonus daughter, not stepdaughter or stepmom. But they basically were saying that they were fighting to get full custody because her mom wasn't sending her to school and she was like a truant. How we met Amanda started off, her stepdaughter, Jessa, was a new student at the school.

This is Lisa Berry. Among the ups and downs of the ongoing custody battle to decide where Amanda's bonus daughter, Jessa, was going to live, she was thrown around to a number of different schools. At one point, she landed at the same school as Lisa's daughter. She and her husband, Steve, quickly became friends with Amanda and Corey. My daughter noticed this girl at this school in her classroom telling the kids how her stepmother was so wonderful and her mother was so hard.

claiming she had problems at home. I actually called the teacher and I said, "You know, I think this young girl's having some problems in her home. She appears to really like her stepmom a lot, but she's having some issues with her mother."

Amanda did call me. She got in touch with me after she heard that I had reached out. And she was talking about how she loves her stepdaughter and that her mother's terrible and putting them through a lot and it's been very hard on the child. And I thought, oh, wow. She wanted to meet me and we met shortly after that. She brought Jessa over and we talked and the next thing I know they were just in our lives.

I thought she was charming. I thought she was very sweet. I thought, "What a loving stepmother." She cares deeply for this little girl, and the little girl appeared to care deeply for her. They just seemed like this very sweet, young family. I liked them. Jessa was very sweet, very charming little girl. My daughter liked her. Very nice, yeah. They saw each other a lot because Amanda and Corey were around a lot.

We'd have dinner, they'd have dinner at our house. We went to their house for dinner. And birthday parties together. Yeah, Amanda had a birthday party for Jessa and she invited the entire class to their house. It was the first time I'd seen that house. It had a Los Gatos address, but it was not Los Gatos Schools. And I remember when we were driving over there to this party, I was thinking, "I know this isn't Los Gatos School District."

And I thought that was pretty odd that she would be having a birthday party, inviting the whole class to their house that was not in the district.

It struck me as odd. And then within a week, obviously one of the parents had reported her because within a week, Jessa was notified that she could not be at the school because she was not in the district. And Amanda told me that it was her mother who told that she wasn't in the district. And they had talked to the school and the school said, oh, we would let her stay. But because the mother's giving her a hard time, she's going to have to leave.

When she told me that, I thought, well, that's unusual. For me, it was natural. Oh, here's another family we've met at school. Making friends with other parents is common, and we like to get to know and just enjoy time spending together.

the kids being together and that kind of thing. And we were relatively newly married, about two, three years by that time. So we were still in that early part of our marriage. And so that was fun and we're looking forward to making new friends. So it was a happy time. We did have lots of friends. We've always had lots of friends. And we had lots of parent friends as well. And one thing I will say is Amanda and Corey came on very strong.

And they did want to kind of dominate a lot of our time, which is a little uncomfortable for me. I thought Corey was genuine. I could see that he was devoted to Amanda. He appeared to be devoted to Jessa and very engaged with her. He seemed to be charming and honest. He was working on growing a business and trying to develop his career.

This is Amanda and Corey's babysitter, Mahasti, again. If you remember, we heard from her in episode one. I said, yeah.

He was a bouncer at the bar. He met this woman, and it was a one-night stand, and he didn't know he had a kid. And he found out not he has a daughter, which is Jessa. That's what I knew about Jessa. I didn't ask too many questions. I didn't say much. But they brought it into my house later, like talking about getting Jessa and bringing Jessa to my house to meet me. You know, they came over there with Jessa one time.

Of course, Corey's daughter Jessa was not the product of a one-night stand.

Jess's mother Alita had been married to Corey for… We were married for four and a half years. He always thought I wasn't a good enough parent. I wasn't a good enough parent. I couldn't make decisions for her. I wasn't, you know, any decision I made for her wasn't good enough. I couldn't even get her a haircut without him complaining. Literally, I took her to get a haircut. And then they went and took her to get another haircut, like after that, saying that I got her bangs cut crooked.

It was constantly instilled into her that I couldn't do anything right. And school was just one more thing. They tried, I think, four or five times to get full custody over the years. Amanda and Corey were desperate to get full custody of Jessa. And while her blog may not have been the best outlet for custody talk, her Facebook was detailing the custody battle in real time. Court went well. Corey has school rights.

Corey gets Jessa on mom's days for all extracurricular activity. Judge said his case was so strong she didn't even send it to assessment. Judge gave Alita 90 days to either fix her stuff or mess up her chance. If mom doesn't do it all, Corey gets full custody. None of it was even true. As the battle raged on, Jessa, the girl at the center of it all, was struggling. I started being alienated from my mom. And things just...

became a lot more complicated from that point on. It's kind of hard for me to determine where everything went wrong. What was the relationship like between your dad and Amanda? Do you remember what their relationship was like? I remember them always, like, seeming happy. Of course, they were in a relationship, so I'd see them argue and stuff. But as a kid, I couldn't really, like, understand what exactly was happening, you know? But they seemed fine.

"It must be hard for you to talk about this." What kind of things did they say to you against your mom? They would always just tell me that she was lying about this, lying about that. They would insult her, just say that she was basically just lying in court and just doing all these horrible things.

Amanda texted me privately and it was constantly little things like this, but to me it was huge. To her, you know, it was probably just her, haha, I'm pissing her off kind of thing. But this is one of the text messages that she sent. It says, legally, I am her mother and you are her birth mother. I am Corey's wife and he asked me to relay the information. Did you ever see her as a mother to you? It was always more of a big sister relationship. I was never really...

me picturing her as my mom. I knew who my mom was. I remember her like trying to refer to herself as like mom or bonus mom and stuff like that, but I never called her mom or bonus mom or anything like that. It never sat right with me. I got a call from the school one day. Amanda had written a letter. Jessa apparently had slept in and Amanda wrote a letter to the school saying she had an appointment and then she signed it "mom."

And so the school called me and I said, "No, no, no, no, no." And then at another school, the office staff called me and said, "Are you Jessa's mom?" And I said, "Yes." And she goes, "I need to tell you that we have Jessa's application here for school. And Amanda Riley is the mother and Corey Riley is the father." And I said, "No, I'm the mom." You know, I'm kind of getting mad now.

And she said, "They don't even have you down as an emergency contact." And I was like, "You've got to be kidding me." But it wasn't just Jessa and Alita that were finding it difficult with all that was going on. In the midst of all this family drama, things were getting worse for Amanda. Alita wrote an email to her attorney talking about what Amanda was going through. Amanda's cancer has relapsed. She will have to undergo a bone marrow transplant in three months in the hopes it will work.

If it doesn't, the girl is on borrowed time. Just a sad situation. We will talk soon. The treatment was not cheap. They submitted a huge bill to family court claiming a hardship. I think it was, what, 270,000? It was something ridiculous. It was a large amount, a bill that they showed.

And of course, they had some redactions on it. — That bill was for her cancer treatment? — Yes. They would lower my child support, you know, due to a hardship. Alita sat down with us and took us through six years' worth of documents. There were hundreds of them. There was paper everywhere. We eventually found the hospital bill Alita referred to. And it actually was a bill for over a quarter of a million dollars.

$288,364 to be exact. She read a statement that Corrie gave to the court requesting a deduction in child support. My wife, Amanda, is currently undergoing treatment and is unable to work. Due to the very high medical expenses related to Amanda's treatment, we are forced to file Chapter 13 bankruptcy. I am requesting the hardship deduction of $4,640 per month for her medical costs.

At the bottom of the Support Amanda page, you could click, you could donate really easy, and it had a listing that said Support Amanda was set up by Amanda Riley's brothers, and if you had questions, you could reach out to an email address. Nancy, the investigative producer. I made note of who to reach out to, and at some point I would come back, because at that moment, I didn't want to tip my hand of what I was doing. I wanted her to continue doing what she was doing, because I had a lot more work to do, and I didn't want to

Let her know I was looking into her. Amanda's Brothers launched supportamanda.com last week. As a labor of love, I'm truly in awe of the response and have never felt more proud. We anticipate the cost of Amanda's treatment and recovery will exceed $100,000. We wish we had the means to just cover this, but I'm humble enough at this point to graciously accept any help offered.

Honestly, it's the $5 donations that have really touched me. Some from caring people who don't even know Amanda. Thanks and hugs to each of you. I have a website so anybody interested in learning more about my story, just supportamanda.com. So anybody who wants to go on there and follow my story and root me on, I love prayers and happy thoughts and anything helps. September of 2013, I started donating to Amanda where I donated $500.

Amanda wasn't shy when it came to calling out the amazing donations that were starting to roll in. Amongst the pictures of herself in countless hospital beds, the IV drips and the MRI machines, were the hampers and the gift baskets, the presents and the community support. To the Cofiros, you have been our biggest and most consistent financial supporters through this, and I don't think you truly understand what that has meant to us.

We literally could not be where we are in this fight without you being a part of this. Your family alone have put years on my life. How do we even try to say thank you for that?

The donations were coming in thick and fast. Oh, she was asking for certain things that were being donated. There was a ton of women there, probably 25, 30 women there that had all given her money and gift cards and just the whole event was... She would ask people to donate the airline miles. I know that I had friends that donated to her directly. I was reaching out to artists that had autographed things. We had a guitar signed by two artists that ended up going to the Kentucky... And I gave them several pieces of...

San Jose Shark memorabilia. And then my mother-in-law and a friend, they all bought stuff. So my mother-in-law donated. She donated $100. I've given all this money. I think it was around 20K.

Go to your happy place for a happy price. Go to your happy price, Priceline.

You guys are fabulous. Thank you to everyone who has donated to the website my brothers created. You have officially donated enough money to pay for last month and this month's treatments completely. I can't tell you what a huge weight has been lifted to have a little breathing room with all the medical finances.

Those who donated money would receive a bracelet with the catchphrase #TeamAmanda on it. I love seeing all the bracelets everyone is wearing for Team Amanda that my dad is sending to all the donors. It's awesome to see all the cool places they're traveling to with you. To all of #TeamAmanda and every person wearing #TeamAmanda bracelet, the support is overwhelming. People donating and helping that I haven't seen in 15 years.

People I barely know getting involved. Multiple states? A few countries? Wow. But donating money wasn't the only way people could support. Thank you to Suzanne and Kalesha for setting up a meal plan service to help with meals. I'm not gonna lie, coming home from a 10-hour hospital day to a full-speed toddler, 11-year-old, and puppies? Cooking dinner is the last thing on my mind. If you would like to bring a meal or help with the expenses to get a bracelet, here's the information.

To access Amanda Riley's personal Care Calendar site, visit carecalendar.com. My name is Penny Fraley, and I am a longtime volunteer with the American Cancer Society. I have been on many different committees and governing boards for different events for the American Cancer Society, including several different Relay for Life, which interestingly enough is how I met Amanda Riley.

There was a picture that I actually took and got in the newspaper of her crossing the finish line on the survivor lap. And she throws her arms up and she says, "I beat cancer. I finished chemotherapy like three days ago." And her mom told me it was the happiest day of her entire life because her baby girl beat cancer.

We loved that picture so much that we used it in our newspaper. Our local newspaper ran that picture. What was she like when you first spoke to her? She was joyous. She wanted to be part of the Relay for Life and wanted to join the committee. And, you know, she was cute and she was charming and she had this little elfish smile. She really could have been anything.

She was explicit and detailed in every aspect of talking about her cancer journey. With so much going on inside and outside of the house, Amanda and Corey needed more than just Mahasti's daycare to help to watch the kids. They reached out to some of their supporters, including Penny.

She just needed someone to watch the kids so she could go do some errands on her own. But her husband had been on a four-day stint and he was exhausted as well. And if we could just watch the kids so they could go out and take care of some stuff for four or five hours, that would be a big help. So we did babysit. It ended up being a little bit more than four or five hours. We also cleaned a very messy house because we're not wanting to sit in a mess. Kids were delightful. Loved the kids. They were so sweet.

There were so many things outside of what the insurance would pay for, especially because she'd had this years-long battle. You know, they were really struggling on a month-to-month basis to make ends meet because of the added expense of her medical bills and the fact that she wasn't able to work for a while.

They were so in debt with medical bills. They were in danger of losing their house. And they'd been working with everything from the American Cancer Society to her insurance, but they were still struggling and every little cent they could raise would help them stay in their house and raise their children, stay together for as long as they could because they didn't know how long Amanda would be with us.

One of the first things I tend to do is I look at public court cases to see what's out there on the people I'm looking into. There were two cases. There was a bankruptcy case involving Amanda and Corey Riley, and there was also a custody case involving Corey Riley and his ex-wife Alita Riley. And in those court records, the attorneys for both of them, those cases, on behalf of their clients,

account for a great deal of medical expense due to Amanda Riley's cancer diagnosis. That's all in their affidavits, their information. They list cancer as a contributing factor to their financial problems that they filed with the courts. You know, you're telling the truth, right? You're not supposed to fill out court documentation if it's not true.

Calling matter number one, Corey Riley and Amanda Riley. Okay, so can I swear you both in? Please raise your right hands. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I do. I do. Thank you. Can you please state your names? Amanda Riley. And Corey Pachigratz. Thank you. And ma'am, you are currently unemployed, is that correct? I'm on disability. You're on disability. Okay. Is that permanent or temporary?

Corey had, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars of medical bills

a month that those medical expenses and that cancer diagnosis was a contributing factor to what he could pay in child support and what he couldn't pay, the different timeframes he could have the child. There was a lot in that custody case that hinged on that cancer diagnosis. When I pulled all the court papers, my first response was, oh, wow, okay. They do claim medical expenses. They do claim

She even had some of the paperwork for the bankruptcy that there was an anticipation of disability due to cancer that she hadn't received yet. And that was $21,000 that she was anticipating for part of this bankruptcy claim and how, I guess, you sort out bankruptcy. It listed about $150,000 in debt.

It turns out the donations and the assistance were just what Amanda needed. The next chapter of her journey was about to begin. Months of amazing miracles. In a sudden turn of events, she took to her blog to share the good news. This week marks a very special week. As of Friday, I have been officially labeled as being in soft remission. But...

before you get out the confetti. As amazing as the news was that she was now in soft remission, there was still quite the road ahead. The cancer is currently not detectable by scan or blood, but the doctors have a strong belief that without my inhibitor drug, it would grow right back like last time.

This is why I have to stay on my ridiculously expensive antibody drug conjugate until I complete the bone marrow harvesting, salvage chemotherapy beam, low-dose whole body radiation, and finally an otologist bone marrow transplant. Despite what Amanda had ahead of her, there was still plenty of good news on the way. It was not long after that here comes the miracle baby, the second one she's pregnant with. We have some unbelievable news.

Carter's going to be a big brother to a healthy, strong little boy. What a whirlwind the past four months has been. After going to the doctors for my standard blood work, my oncologist pulled me aside to tell me the news. I was three weeks pregnant. This blog post, there's a picture of Amanda. She's young. She's cradling her baby bump. She's looking down.

you know, looking at her baby to be, you know, and it's a very touching photo. She's wearing a shirt that says, "I survived," with an arrow pointing at her cradled baby bump that says, "So did I." So I survived. So did I. I was so confused. How? All the doctors told me it would be virtually impossible to have any more children after completing eight very strenuous rounds of chemotherapy in 2012 after Carter was born.

To top it off, I also had an IUD birth control to make extra sure we were being smart. And she's going to stop all the treatments to save the baby. And she doesn't care about her own life. I don't care if I die, but I'm going to keep this baby. Remember that thing about labels? Well, this new baby was. She's like, oh my God, it's my miracle baby. She's got these miracle babies. He's a miracle baby that none of the chemo affected him.

At first, it was incredibly scary. What if I couldn't have the baby because of chemo? Would something be wrong with the baby? But after a plethora of intense prenatal testings, screenings, and monitoring, we met with a panel of doctors that specialize in pregnancy during cancer and learned that this was very doable, safe, and possible.

I can stay on chemo safely during the first two trimesters. Then they will remove me from all chemotherapy for the third trimester to keep my body strong and to protect the baby. It's a miracle baby. What did you say to her when she told you that she was pregnant and that she was stopping her treatment? I remember I told her, "Amanda, you should think about your other baby. He needs you. This one is not completely there."

But it wasn't just the baby that was a miracle. While the miracle months were coming to an end, they were ending with something huge

Eight weeks after posting about her pregnancy, Amanda had another round of good news to share with her followers. Today is a great day. This shirt says it all. It's sunny and happy, just like our #HappyLife, #HappyFamily, #HappyHusband, our #HappyKids, our baby on the way, our amazing friends, our #HappyHome, and #HappyPuppies.

But right now, I am most hashtag happy that I'm done with chemo. I have officially beat cancer twice. God blessed us. Celebration in our house tonight. I felt really torn, more so with...

Is this real or not? Does she have cancer or not? So every time I would read something, I'd say, oh no, she's got cancer. Like, look at this photo. This is intense looking. This looks like, yeah, she has cancer. And then I would read on a little bit further and I'd go, oh no, she doesn't have cancer. The detail and the energy and everything that went into it just felt really real.

So I start looking through the bankruptcy documents and there's just pages and pages of debt. And I figured the best place to start is going through and see what that debt's all about. And there's not one doctor, one medical expense. It's just all debt. It took me a bit to kind of reconcile like, okay, is she bold enough to lie in court papers or does she really have cancer?

There was definitely this struggle back and forth with how far would she take it? Would someone, okay, I'm raising a little bit of money through a donation page to I'm now using this to claim bankruptcy and pay less in child support. Like, you know, like how far does someone take it? And so, yeah, that was a tough one to think. Could someone be so bold? Scamander is hosted and produced by me, Charlie Webster and produced by Jackson McLennan.

Amanda's blog posts are read by actor Kendall Horne. Peggy, Amanda's mom, is read by actor Jill Marie Hoffman. Edit and theme music by Nico Pallella. Assistant producer Casey Hertz. Assistant editor Seema Grewal. Additional production support from Stephen Sletten, Will Hagel and Nicole Urban. Executive produced by me, Charlie Webster and Nancy Moscatello.

Scamander is a Lionsgate Sound Production engineered by Pilgrim Media Group.