UPDATE AUG 16 2026 ...PEOPLE/MAG. Dad Brian Dalton Demands Answers After Daughter Lilly Dies of Rare Cancer: Why Are So Many Kids Getting Sick in This Ladera Ranch CA Community? Three days after graduating from college at Loyola University in New Orleans, Lilly Dalton told her parents her stomach hurt. Doctors found a tumor on the 21-year-old’s liver and she was diagnosed with a very rare, one-of-a-kind cancer, desmoplastic small round cell tumor or DSRCT .  Lilly Dalton was raised in Laguna Niguel, a city in Orange County, CA just six miles from Ladera Ranch , where 12 children and young adults (and 30 some dogs with cancer) have been diagnosed with another rare cancer, Ewing sarcoma. “ That’s not a coincidence, ” says her father, Brian Dalton . Desmoplastic small round cell tumor ( DSRCT ) is caused by a specific genetic error where chromosomes 11 and 22 break and rejoin. This creates an abnormal fusion gene called EWSR1-WT1, ( very similar to Ewing sarcoma ) which turns...