Six Years Later, Camp Owners Continue to Delay Justice
PASADENA, Calif. – Roxie Forbes was only six years old in 2019 when she drowned under dubious circumstances at the Altadena, California, summer camp named Summerkids, but her father is more determined than ever to bare the truth at an upcoming federal trial six and a half years after her death.
Within months of her drowning, Roxie’s father Doug Forbes, co-founder of Meow Meow Foundation, said he discovered that the Summerkids Owner-Director, a former Los Angeles Times Reporter and Board Member of Pasadena-based nonprofit Young and Healthy, ws ultimately responsible for a scheme that fraudulently certified her counselors as American Red Cross lifeguards. Forbes said she did so to save money on training time at the risk of imperiling children as young as three years old. He has a multitude of documents to prove it.
“This woman and her camp-owning family traded my daughter’s life for approximately five to seven thousand dollars in extra profit, it’s that simple,” Forbes said. “I possess a preponderance of evidence that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, for decades, this family intentionally lied about their insidious camp practices to thousands of parents, including my wife and me.”
Forbes said the camp-owning family, their attorney Margaret “Peggy” Holm and Mary Campo, attorney for the former Summerkids Assistant Camp Director, have delayed his jury trial five times over four years. Forbes said, “The truth is the truth. The facts are the facts. The evidence is the evidence. I possess all of it, and they know it. This is why they have done everything possible to muzzle me, to manipulate me, to dismiss me and to outlast me. But they have failed. Why else would they or anyone do this were it not for the fact that they are guilty?”
Federal Courthouse downtown Los Angeles
According to publicly available lawsuit documents, Forbes has successfully convinced a federal judge that the Summerkids owners, four counselors, the assistant director and fake Red Cross lifeguard instructor Andrew Cervantes should stand trial for charges ranging from wrongful death of Roxie to gross negligence including fraud.
Roxie’s camp “buddy counselor” whose father is a longtime, high-profile Los Angeles Times reporter, was in the pool when Roxie drowned. His lifeguard certification was fraudulent. His water safety instructor certification was fraudulent. He failed to keep Roxie — a learning swimmer — at arm’s length. He failed to notice Roxie floating dead. He failed to properly perform CPR. A treasure trove of evidence and legal filings support these assertions.
This counselor, Rpxie’s buddy counselor, violated Summerkids staff policies by posting photos of himself on social media in which he publicly urinates on a black-owned restaurant and also posts fake driver’s licenses.
Daniel “Hank” Rainey is on the left. This was his public social media page.
His mother Alison, a senior media relations specialist at Keck Medicine of USC, told homicide detectives “boys will be boys.” She also said her son was “another victim of the tragedy,” equating Roxie’s drowning to her son whom she said, “was unfortunately right there.” She said “it was bad luck that day that he was in that pool and that girl was right there.” She ended by saying her son Hank “wasn’t even watching… he was the fun one in the pool.”
Because the camp owners, by way of attorneys Holm and Campo, have subjected Forbes to trial delays for five years, Forbes has otherwise had to relate the camp safety impact of this federal lawsuit via other means. Forbes graduated from a Harvard University grad studies program in journalism wherein he focused on his own investigation of Roxie’s horrific death. He appeared on major news broadcasts and shared his investigation with major media such as the Washington Post.
According to documents, attorney Holm, has repeatedly attempted to muzzle Forbes’ investigative efforts, going so far as to demand he shut down two websites that Forbes manages. Holm threatened to shut down portions of filming of Forbes’ soon-to-be-released feature documentary. According to documents, Holm lied about the nature of Doug Forbes’ contact with aquatics experts Tom and Rachel Griffiths for his research and advocacy work. Holm threatened Elena Matyas’ law career by lying about Matyas whom she said threatened the Summerkids director after a deposition According to video, Holm’s assertions are indisputable lies.
Holm is apparently no stranger to being accused of such tactics. She was an attorney who defended the U.S. Gymnastics Association in the shocking civil lawsuit brought by dozens of former Olympic gymnasts against USGA serial sex abuser Larry Nassar. Olympic and world champion Jordyn Wieber accused Holm of attempting to muzzle female victims of horrific sexual molestation. “Here we are finally trying to get past this and get the justice we deserve, and they keep sticking the knife in even further,” Wieber said of Holm, according to a multitude of news coverage of the Nassar trial.
Forbes said the camp-owning family of Summerkids also issued a shocking, vile demand to thousands of parents immediately following Roxie’s grossly negligent death. The family wrote an email in which they said, “Do not plan to pick up your child early. We have kept the day as normal as possible.” This mandate mandate prevented parents from consoling traumatized children who witnessed Roxie’s death on a day that was anything but normal. Forbes said he spoke with parents whose children required trauma therapy.
In that same email, the camp owners lied that their lifeguards were Red Cross certified when they were fake lifeguards fraudulently certified by the camp owners and their fake lifeguard instructor. They lied about the time Roxie was floating dead unnoticed. They lied about the children (as young as four) being in their designated spots in the pool. They lied about counselor communications at the pool. They failed to tell parents that not a single counselor at the pool noticed Roxie floating dead. Apparently, some counselor outside of the pool noticed Roxie.
And the family failed to inform parents that the camp director, a 50-year-old woman, holed up in her office while Roxie lied dead on her pool deck. She not only refused to interact with EMS and first responding deputies for upwards of 20 minutes, she also refused to call Doug and Elena and instead called her own parents.
The federal judge had rescheduled the high-profile federal trial for a fifth time over six years, which was to have commenced November 5, 2025. However, defense attorneys filed Motions only weeks before the trial requesting yet another delay until 2026, at which time Roxie Forbes will have been dead longer than she was alive.
Forbes’s wife Elena Matyas will never get the opportunity to see justice served. She died at 50 years old. Matyas suffered severe depression and suicidal ideation after Roxie was killed at Summerkids. Although Matyas courageously carried on as co-founder of Meow Meow Foundation, ruthless heartbreak and trauma buckled her immune system. She died from complications of cancer and pneumonia in March of 2022.
“She was my everything, and the most selfless soul I have ever known” Forbes said. “There’s plenty of science that draws a straight line from depression to fatal illness. In the end, Elena graciously agreed to have me record her final wishes. Her exact words were to get as much justice for Roxie as possible and to take their land, their money, their power.”
Forbes said they both knew that this was the only way justice could be served, despite no manner of money or any other resource being worthy of Roxie’s life.
Summerkids Camp burned down in the Eaton Fire in January of this year. Los Angeles County had already designated the 54-acre Summerkids parcel that the camp family owned as subject to the most severe risks of fires, earthquakes, landslides, ecological encumbrances and other logistical restrictions. The county deemed the property virtually undevelopable but for the two structures that already existed on site.
The camp owner father made a statement at a public hearing in December of 2024, weeks before the Eaton fire, where he voiced outrage about not being able to develop on his land. Not once did he mention anything about a summer camp or serving children or protections of fellow citizens. Instead, he believed his property, which was very close to the origin of the fire, should be an exception while neighbors should be penalized. “The downzoning of our property from 52 homes to two isn't just a number, it destroys the dreams we hold for our family's future. There are homes that are built within that same area. None of those people are being downzoned the way we are. Why can’t they be downzoned and leave us alone.”
The camp owner-father’s daughter, who was the camp director when Roxie drowned, entertained an NPR interview before the Eaton Fire. She too never mentioned the summer camp, never mentioned serving children or protections for her neighbors in Altadena. Instead she focused on her land value. “We really feel like the county did not do a great job at taking a look at some of these really large parcels that are family-owned, that suddenly were becoming completely devalued.”
However, after the fire, she suddenly struck an entirely different tone. “It gives us hope that our hillsides will be hillsides again and I certainly don't want to see huge developments go up.”
Forbes said this is precisely the kind of “manipulative, talking out of both sides of her mouth” that he has repeatedly witnessed from the family since their grossly negligent and willful acts caused Roxie to due in their small summer camp swimming pool. Forbes was sickened but not surprised that the family would leverage the devastation of thousands of lives affected by the fires for their own public relations purposes.
Although, Forbes’s wife Elena asked that Forbes do everything possible to take the camp property from the owners in their lawsuit, he said he would never do so knowing that the camp-owning family would continue to demand his silence about his investigation of Roxie’s death, including their intentional, fraudulent acts, according to legal documents and an abundance of evidence.
Forbes also said that any attempts by the camp owners to pawn off the property on him before the fire struck would have been entirely untrustworthy. “That Summerkids land was glorious, but for Elena and me, it had been a graveyard since June 28, 2019, when the owners remorselessly buried our child, our lives and the truth. I wouldn’t have put it past them to offer the property to me at some point after they found out that it was, in their words, ”completely devalued.”
The federal judge has set a final trial date of January 13, 2026. While the federal court bars cameras or recordings, Forbes plans on taking copious notes, which he will publicly release only after a jury renders its verdict. Forbes said he will do so because the trial has national legislative and policy implications related to his widely known camp safety advocacy efforts at Meow Meow Foundation.
The summer camp industry is a colossus with a $70 billion economic impact. Approximately 25,000 camps and 1.5 million employees serve 25 million children. Yet, only slightly more than half of states require licensing for camps. Only a fraction requires meaningful child protections, including health supervision, certifications and training for high-risk activities including gun ranges with live ammunition and emergency action plans.
California does not license day or overnight (resident) camps. Although shocking as it may be, a camp lobby organization named the American Camp Association is largely in control of the few requirements that apply to overnight camps. Summerkids was a member of the Association. According to documents, the morning Forbes and his wife removed Roxie from life support, the camp owner-director immediately called representatives of the American Camp Association to request public relations assistance in an apparent effort to cover up the facts and overcome the impact it would have on her camp enrollment.
Forbes noted she had a history of covering up the circumstances surrounding Roxie’s death. She immediately removed Forbes and his wife from the camp parent informational portal so Forbes and Matyas could not ask parents questions about Roxie’s drowning. She immediately removed them from the email communications. She intentionally did not invite them to a meeting at the camp three days after the drowning where parents demanded answers. She immediately told parents and major media that Forbes and Matyas demanded their privacy, which was a lie, because Forbes and Matyas demanded answers. And, she even refused to return their tuition money.
Forbes spent six years advocating for change. Forbes successfully passed the Elena Matyas Camp Safety Ordinance and the Roxie Swim Safe Ordinance in Los Angeles County. Earlier this year, Governor Newsom emailed Forbes directly to say that he signed Forbes’s latest statewide camp safety bill into law. Forbes is working with federal legislators on national protections, which are currently stalled by the Trump administration.
“I do this work around the country to honor my child and my wife and other families and children who do not have to suffer as we have,” Forbes said. “I have assisted families from other states, and their attorneys, in their lawsuit discovery processes. I have assisted many media outlets in investigations of camp harm. It remains no less than shocking if not vile that the Summerkids owners and camp counselors continue to refuse to admit what they did, let alone make every unconditional offer they could to make it right. As a journalist—documentarian I know what they did and why. They cowardly covered up circumstances to protect reputation and assets. Come January 13, however, truth and fact will be on trial. This is when I expect Roxie and Elena to finally obtain the justice they so deserve.”
