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Seventeen-year-old Brody Matteson went through hell in the last year of his life. Feeding tubes, blood transfusions, ambulance rides, intense nausea and bone-deep pain.
He fought with astonishing courage, drawing on years of grit honed on the football field, but the disease continued to consume him.
Brody died in March following a 20-month battle with Ewing sarcoma — a bone cancer so rare only around 200 children and teens are diagnosed with it across the United States a year, according to the American Cancer Society.
Following his diagnosis and death, Brody’s parents received messages from other families in Ladera Ranch whose children had suffered from the same uncommon disease.
Alarm bells started ringing. Members of the Orange County community tallied at least six cases of Ewing sarcoma diagnosed among children and young adults between 2013 and 2024.
“There definitely is cause for concern for members of this community,” said Dr. Janet Yoon, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at City of Hope who specializes in Ewing sarcoma.
Yoon said the numbers reported by the community strike her as unusual and merit further investigation, but noted that it would be “incredibly challenging” to prove any causal link among the cases.
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There are no known environmental causes of Ewing sarcoma. Research into risk factors for developing the disease is limited, in part because the cancer is so rare.
The California Cancer Registry is reviewing data for Ladera Ranch, where around 26,000 people live, in response to residents’ concerns. Their analysis, estimated to be complete this fall, will assess whether there is a regional cluster of Ewing sarcoma or other cancers.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention define a cancer cluster as a higher-than-expected number of cases of the same cancer in a specific area over a defined period of time. But there’s no fixed formula for what counts as unusually high.
If a cluster is determined to exist in Ladera Ranch, epidemiologists Logan Spector and Joseph Wiemels warn that there may be no discernible cause.
“[C]oincidence can, in fact, be the reason for an apparent cluster,” they wrote in an op-ed in the Orange County Register. “[I]n a country the size of the United States it is likely that cases will randomly occur closely in time and space somewhere over the course of a few decades.”
‘There’s something wrong here’
Lessons on probability do little to ease the frustration of parents who have lost their children.
“There’s something wrong here,” said Ladera Ranch resident Bonnie Regan, whose son Ryan died from Ewing sarcoma in October 2025. “I had never even heard of this kind of cancer before.”
Ewing sarcoma is an aggressive cancer that grows in bones or soft tissues and predominantly affects children and young adults ages 10 to 20.
It typically presents as a persistent pain so intense it can wake a patient up from a sound sleep. Caught early in an isolated part of the body, it has a survival rate of roughly 70%, but if it starts to metastasize, that drops to around 30%, Yoon said.
Ryan was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma in 2017 at age 29, later than typical for the disease. He fought the cancer for eight years, until it spread to his lungs, shoulder, brain, spine, lymph node, adrenal gland and stomach.
“He was our only child, so he was the center of our universe,” said Bonnie.
Dustin Matteson, said that not a day, or even an hour, passes where he doesn’t miss his son Brody.
“He was the glue that held our family together,” he said. “I’d come down the stairs in the morning, and like a football player, he would flex at me and say, ‘Are you gonna be great today, Dustin Matteson?’”
Despite the fact that there are no proven causes of Ewing sarcoma, Matteson and other residents are determined to search for answers.
“It feels like where we live, and with the high number of cases, it’s a place where you should be able to find out what caused it,” he said.
A coalition of residents have formed a group called Ladera Health Watch to gather health data, review local environmental and pesticide records, and push for official investigations into the Ewing sarcoma cases. They are also concerned about anecdotal reports of breast and brain cancer, high rates of allergies and chronically ill children.
DeAnn Kling is one of three people on her street who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She also knows the pain of losing a child. Her 16-year-old daughter, Johnna Haymes, died in 2020 from a sudden blood clot in her lung.
“There is something going on [due to] pesticides, water, the house or the ground,” said Kling. “There’s got to be.”
Residents initially focused their efforts on limiting pesticide use to reduce chemical exposure and, they hope, community illness.
Both Ladera Ranch Maintenance Corp., the community homeowners association, and the Capistrano Unified School District recently agreed to temporarily pause the use of products for managing weeds and regulating plant growth.
Residents involved in Ladera Health Watch are also concerned about whether old oil and gas wells underneath the Ladera Ranch and the nearby Prima Deshecha Landfill could be possible sources of environmental contamination.
‘This well is not to be built over’
Ladera Ranch is a 4,000-acre master-planned community nestled between Mission Viejo and San Juan Capistrano that began construction in 1998 and was substantially completed in 2006. Billed as a place where families can “plant roots and grow wings,” the neighborhood features minty green lawns, picket fences, pocket parks and gazebos reminiscent of the manicured charm of Stars Hollow.
Underneath the picturesque community sit two abandoned oil wells located at approximately 15 Citrus Lane and 41 Agapanthus St. Neither well had a history of producing oil or gas and were both “re-abandoned” — meaning closed for a second time to ensure seals meet current safety standards — by DMB Development in the early 2000s when the company was building Ladera Ranch.
Members of Ladera Health Watch have looked at the oil well files and are concerned that the Citrus Lane well may not have been resealed to today’s standards. They have asked the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM), which oversees idle and abandoned wells in the state, to reevaluate the well’s integrity and determine if further investigation is warranted.
DMB Development did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the re-abandonment of the well.
Active and abandoned oil and gas wells can spread carcinogens such as benzene, volatile organic compounds and radioactive material into surrounding soil, water and air. Proximity to wells has been linked with elevated rates of childhood leukemia and lymphoma.
However, a study published in January found no statistically significant correlation between proximity to active and abandoned oil and gas development and the risk of childhood Ewing sarcoma in California.
Some residents are concerned by a note in the re-abandonment files for the Citrus Lane well that reads, “This well is not to be built over without further consideration,” but provides no explanation as to why the warning is necessary. The note appears twice in handwriting and is typed again on the final report of well abandonment.
Jill Johnston, an associate professor of environmental health at UC Irvine, said she had never encountered such a note in her research on Southern California’s oil wells.
“Either there’s something physical going on that makes it unstable to build on top of, or there’s potential exposure to chemicals,” she said. “That’s what I would assume would drive that comment.”
Kenneth Henderson, the acting state oil and gas supervisor at the time, who signed off on the final report, said in a phone interview that he did not recall why the note was included but that he supposed that “the well plugging may not have been up to the current standards.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Conservation, which oversees CalGEM, said the comment appeared to be a note from the state engineer who drafted the final report and was probably included due to a “clerical error.”
However, the handwritten note specifically states “put on final letter.” The spokesperson did not comment on those instructions.
The spokesperson also noted that CalGEM typically recommends that structures not be placed over sealed wells and that construction not impede access to wells.
Nonetheless, it is common for homes to be built on top of or adjacent to wells.
There are around 240,000 active, idle and abandoned oil wells across California, including more than 22,000 wells in L.A. County and several thousand in Orange County, according to CalGEM data.
“While CalGEM recognizes that wells plugged and sealed to current requirements are less likely to experience leakage, there is no guarantee,” the spokesperson said.
‘We’re right in the path’
Dustin Matteson, Brody’s father, believes that emissions from the nearby Prima Deshecha Landfill could be connected to his son’s sickness.
“The prevailing winds across that landfill come right through Ladera Ranch from the south and southwest,” he said. “We’re right in the path of that.”
No study has found an environmental cause for Ewing sarcoma. One of the only studies that has found an association between environmental toxins and Ewing sarcoma cases looked at airborne chemical emissions from industrial sites across the U.S.
Researchers found that high levels of pollutants — including xylene, ethylbenzene, toluene, naphthalene, nickel compounds, and benzo[g,h,i]perylene — were associated with increased diagnosis rates of Ewing sarcoma at the county level.
“While causality cannot be inferred, these findings support further investigation of environmental risk factors in Ewing sarcoma, particularly in high-emission geographic clusters,” the study, led by UCLA researchers, concluded.
Matteson has read the study closely and said he finds it “very alarming” that the Prima Deshecha Landfill, located within five miles of Ladera Ranch, emits some of the same pollutants that researchers flagged.
The study found that counties with high levels of ethylbenzene reported about 13.56 Ewing sarcoma cases per million people compared to 9.33 per million in low-exposure counties. Counties with high levels of toulene reported 12.88 cases per million versus 7.35 in low-exposure counties.
The study defined high-exposure counties as having median annual emissions of 51 pounds of ethylbenzene and 44 pounds of toulene.
In 2024, the South Coast Air Quality Management District reported that the Prima Deshecha Landfill emitted around 2,681 pounds of ethylbenzene annually and 55 pounds of toluene.
‘Really close to home’
Government agencies are awaiting results of the California Cancer Registry analysis before deciding to move forward with any further investigations.
Members of Ladera Health Watch, however, are plowing ahead with research of their own.
They are working with a team at Cal State Fullerton to perform water and soil testing in Ladera. They have also developed a proposed pest management policy to move Ladera toward an organic-first, least-toxic landscape program. And they are working with legislators to advocate for greater state attention to pesticide use and public health, more funding for research into possible causes of Ewing sarcoma and increased transparency around community-level cancer data.
For local attorney Jaclyn French, being part of the health watch has become a second job. She has spent hundreds of hours submitting public records requests, poring over pesticide reports late at night and serving as a liaison between elected officials and concerned residents.
Her next-door neighbor was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma while he was in middle school in 2023, and since Brody’s death she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the disease.
“Having a 10-year-old son who is in the age range of these kids who are being diagnosed makes it feel really close to home,” she said.
Though she’s fearful, she is not ready to leave the community she calls home, nor abandon the group’s quest for answers.
“Our community is so small and tight-knit,” she said, “we have a personal feeling of responsibility for our neighbors.”
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