Naya Rivera’s Family Honors Her on the One-Year Anniversary of Her Death

One year ago today, Naya Rivera died in an accidental drowning. Her mother and sister remember that tragic day as they waited for her body to be recovered.

Yolanda Previtire, the mother of Rivera, spoke with Good Morning America on Thursday, saying her daughter had FaceTimed her from the rented pontoon boat. Rivera was boating with her son, Josey Dorsey, in California’s Lake Piru on July 8, 2020.

Previtire took screenshots to capture Josey fishing during that call, which later helped search teams find the 33-year-old’s body.

Nickayla Rivera, the Glee star’s younger sister, also talked about helping raise Josey with Naya’s ex-husband Ryan Dorsey, Yahoo reported.

“I missed two of her FaceTime calls, and I called her back,” Previtire recalled. “I said, ‘Naya, Where are you?'” She said Naya explained she wanted to take Josey fishing. “We had a beautiful conversation. The sun was kissing her face, and she was just beautiful. She had a white, beautiful swimming suit on, and she was glowing.”

Previtire told her daughter, “The water’s getting choppy,” during the call, and urged Naya to move the boat to a cove where the water may be “a little bit calmer.” She also told her daughter, “I love you” and “call me when you get off the water.”

Hours later, authorities were at her door to tell her that her grandson Josey was safe thanks to his life jacket but was found on the drifting boat alone, and unfortunately, Rivera was missing.

“It was almost like a force,” she said of absorbing that news. “I don’t know what it was, but I literally was just pushed backwards. I just ran backwards, if you can imagine, just screaming, and I ended up in the bathroom. I slammed the door; I was on the floor.”

Nickayla recalled those days of waiting for her sister’s body to be recovered “absolute hell.”

Rivera’s body was retrieved from the lake on July 13. Nickayla said it was “a relief, in a way,” after those five hellish days of unsuccessful searching.

It was Josey who asked Nickayla to move in with him after Naya’s death.

“I’m very grateful to be able to help him transition into whatever he’s going to be next,” said the model. “I knew right when it happened, right when we got him, I knew the role that I had to take. That was a big change and something that I had to get used to too.”

Previtire shared that the family is in therapy to cope with the shared trauma and that they don’t tiptoe around discussing Naya around Josey, noting that “he misses his mom” and “recalls their life together.”