Reality Star’s Daughter Opens Up About Struggles with Homelessness

Once known as the rebellious teenage daughter on the popular reality series “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” Alexa Curtin is now facing a stark reality at the age of 33. She is currently navigating the perilous streets of Lancaster, California, in search of ways to support her addiction to fentanyl.

In a candid interview with the Daily Mail last week, Curtin revealed, “The drug use started right after high school, and I began drinking heavily.” She elaborated on how her substance use escalated, saying, “It snowballed and got worse when I started using pills. And then the pills switched over to the hard drugs.”

Earlier this month, footage of Curtin, now almost unrecognizable, went viral, prompting the Daily Mail to find her at a notorious, rundown motel known for its association with drugs and prostitution. In this troubling environment, Curtin’s desperate appeal for help becomes all the more urgent and distressing.

‘It snowballed and got worse when I started using pills. And then the pills switched over to the hard drugs.’

After footage of an unrecognizable Curtin went viral earlier this month, the Daily Mail tracked her down to a notorious, run-down motel rife with drugs and prostitution to hear her tragic plea. It brings her urgent need for help into horrifyingly sharp focus. 

She looked ghostly pale and sodden, having slept in the cold and rain for days working to fund her habit.

She was missing several teeth and two fingers were amputated – a shocking sign of what the streets have done to her. 

Curtin said the 15 years since her family appeared on the Bravo reality show have been ‘beyond horrific.’ 

‘I’m here and I’m alive, but I don’t want to be,’ Curtin told the Daily Mail.  ‘I’m not trying to get no one’s attention. I am f*****g being tortured. This is a cry for help.’

Alexa Curtin, the youngest daughter of Real Housewives of Orange County star Lynne Curtin, used to be a star but now spends her days roaming the streets for drugs

Alexa and her mom pictured in 2011, at the peak of the Bravo show’s popularity 

Curtin and her mother, Lynne, were once blockbuster television.

Rebellious and defiant, Curtin was often sneaking out, drinking alcohol and missing curfew. Lynne drew criticism from fellow cast members over her apparently lax parenting style and spending.

Some viewers saw a simple teen drama, but there were flickers of deeper emotional strain. In one scene, a 16-year-old Curtin cried as she revealed she was struggling with depression.

In another traumatizing moment, the teenager and her sister were served eviction papers at her family’s multimillion-dollar home while her parents were away – the humiliation captured on camera.

It later emerged that Lynne and Frank had been served multiple eviction notices and that the lavish life they portrayed in the show was largely smoke and mirrors. 

‘I don’t really talk about it, and I don’t even try to think about [the Real Housewives show],’ Curtin told the Daily Mail.

‘I just feel like the show kind of portrayed me and my family in a really bad way. It was just it being played out in the public forum like that… was really hard for me, like really difficult because all my friends in school were watching it and they really weren’t too nice to me. 

‘I just like felt really isolated and I think that’s what made me turn to the drugs. I was really young at the time… at such a young age that’s like a vital time to portray someone in the wrong way, especially a minor.’

Curtin appeared on the show between the ages of 15 and 17, alongside her father Frank and older sister Raquel. She says the stress of filming and the public scrutiny fueled her heavy drinking. 

Meanwhile, Lynne and Frank Curtin’s marriage began to unravel soon after the family’s eviction. They eventually separated.

After footage of an unrecognizable Curtin went viral earlier this month, the Daily Mail tracked her down to a notorious motel rife with drugs and prostitution

She looked ghostly pale and sodden, having slept in the cold and rain for days working to fund her habit. She was pictured walking with an unknown masked man

Lynne Curtin (second from left) was a star on Bravo’s Real Housewives of Orange County from 2008 to 2010

Curtin and her older sister Raquel’s wild partying was heavily featured on the early seasons of the show, when they were both still teenagers

The Daily Mail has contacted both parents for comment.

Lynne now lives in San Diego and runs a jewelry line. Raquel, 36, works as an OnlyFans model and frequently promotes her mother’s designs.

According to Curtin, her father is still in the construction business.    

After leaving home, she briefly worked as a porn star under the alias Jayden Taylors before spiraling further into addiction.

Now, she says, fentanyl is the only thing that dulls the pain.  

Earlier this month, Curtin was seen at the Lancaster motel and disappeared into a corner hallway with other users, smoked drugs for 20 minutes and re-emerged with bloodshot eyes.

The drug of choice is fentanyl for many of the customers who came in and out of several rooms at the squalid motel as they tried to ‘score’ an ounce of the deadly drug for $65. 

Curtin stormed out moments later and rushed into a waiting luxury vehicle that sped off without warning.

On a cold, rainy afternoon last week, the Daily Mail caught back up with a disheveled Curtin again as she stepped off a bus on Avenue J.

Shivering and wet, she walked a quarter mile through the downpour to the motel to get her fix of fentanyl. 

By nightfall, the drugs had taken hold and Curtin grew agitated while speaking about her parents, her life on the streets and her missing fingers.

At one point during her interview with the Daily Mail, Curtin claimed her face was ‘shifting’ and that she was both God and an alien

At one point she raised her arms and began cursing about her family

‘Why can’t we love our flaws because if you’re going to have flaws, you might as well like them, right? I have a lot of them,’ she said, glancing at her right hand with a faint smirk.

She claims she lost her fingers in a car accident. When asked if she had ever tried to hurt herself, Curtin turned away and sobbed quietly.

Asked if she had a message for her parents, she replied with six heartbreaking words: ‘I don’t even have parents anymore.’ 

Curtin told the Daily Mail the last time she spoke with her mother was in 2019 during an argument over her car.

She launched into a furious, curse-filled tirade, still visibly angry as she recalled it.

At one point during our interview, Curtin claimed her face was ‘shifting’ and that she was both God and an alien. 

She flailed her arms and yelled directly into the camera while addressing her father. 

In a bizarre turn, she lifted her shirt and exposed her bare breasts. 

‘F*** you, Frank Curtin, you b****! I hate you,’ she said. She then fell asleep in her chair, her hair still wet after taking a shower earlier. 

In 2017, Curtin was awarded $2.1 million after she claimed an Orange County Sheriff’s deputy allegedly forced her to give him oral sex and then raped her in April 2014 following a traffic stop. She declined to say what became of the settlement.

The deputy denied the allegations. 

Court records show she spent four days in jail in August 2018 after pleading guilty to vandalism, petty theft and driving under the influence of a drug.

The Lancaster motel is a cesspit for criminal activity, with drug addicts scoring and using 24/7

On June 3, 2025 she was sentenced to six days in Orange County jail in connection with an August 2022 arrest for possession of methamphetamine and paraphernalia, according to court records.

About eight months ago, Curtin said she boarded a Metrolink train in Orange County and rode it to the final stop – Lancaster, roughly 100 miles north. 

She has remained there since. 

Over the course of a few days, the Daily Mail watched Curtin and dozens of motel customers pile in and out of rooms where drugs are allegedly sold. 

Curtin and other homeless men and women took shelter inside the motel’s hallways because of the recent downpour. 

Many said they couldn’t afford the $95 per night fee for a room, so they parked their belongings wherever they could find space at the motel property.

‘You would be surprised who comes out here,’ one of Curtin’s friends told the Daily Mail. ‘There are teachers who come here looking for [cocaine].’

Another friend said: ‘The cops come out here three or four times a day and we scatter, run into the rooms. It’s like that every day. It never stops.’  

Jade (left), Mando (right) and their dog, Terminator, sought refuge from the rain last week and arranged their belongings in the motel hallway

Tired and cold, people huddled together in another area of the Lancaster motel where Alexa Curtin is known to frequent

Curtin spends her days walking or taking buses between thrift stores, sometimes selling clothes on the street. 

Other days, she frequents one of the buildings known to locals as the ‘crack house.’ 

Without any contact from her family, Curtin has become close to fellow addicts.

Most nights, when she is not seeking out ‘dates’, she lingers at a motel frequented by other addicts, who know her as ‘Lexi.’

She claims that about a month ago she was handcuffed to a bed and raped for hours by a man who threatened to kill her. The drugs, she said, are the only way she can forget it. 

‘I’ve destroyed my life, I’ve destroyed my future, and I don’t really care because I’m just going to keep doing the devil dance,’ she said.

• If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the confidential 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US on 988. There is also an online chat available at 988lifeline.org.