A Miami sophomore’s night out ended in tragedy. Her mother has a message for other parents

Shawnee Baker was sipping coffee on a sailboat off the coast of Maine when her phone rang. It was a police officer in Florida with devastating news: Her daughter had been in a terrible accident. Baker and her husband needed to come to Miami. Immediately. Baylie Grogan had started her sophomore year at the University of Miami just that week. Hours earlier, Baker had sent her a text message, but it bounced back because of spotty network at sea. Or so she thought. “Good morning, sweetie. How was your night?” it read. But when Baker answered her phone, the horrible answer to that question began to unfold. “I asked the officer, ‘What happened?’ He was like, ‘I’m really sorry. I can’t tell you anything more. All I can tell you is you need to turn the sailboat around and come immediately. Get back to shore. This is urgent … your daughter is in the hospital, and you may be coming to say goodbye.’” Trembling, Shawnee asked her husband, Scott Baker, to call the hospital. A doctor confirmed their daughter was in surgery. But the hospital declined to share details on the procedure because at 19, Baylie was considered an adult, and her medical information was protected under HIPAA privacy laws. And because Baylie had not signed a health care proxy document, the hospital did not recognize her mother as her legal advocate, she said. That day – August 19, 2018 – marked the beginning of a grueling ordeal that upended the Bakers’ world. They rushed to Miami, not knowing whether their daughter was alive or dead, and arrived at the hospital 16 hours later to a grim scene: Baylie in an ICU bed, tangled in tubes and with deep bruises all over her body. She was barely recognizable – her head was the size of a basketball due to the swelling on her brain. Her family soon learned Baylie had hailed a rideshare about 1 a.m. after a night out, setting off a harrowing chain of events. For the Bakers, what followed was an emotionally wrenching struggle — complicated by laws that barred them from making decisions about Baylie’s health care. Baylie died six weeks later. Before her final breath, her family fought two medical and legal battles: one to save her life, and another to let her go. A final ‘I love you Momma’ and a kiss goodbye As her mother, Shawnee Baker always believed she’d have a say in Baylie’s medical care. But once Baylie turned 18 her freshman year, the law said otherwise. Once a child is no longer a minor, the parents’ access to their medical record is limited – even if they pay for health insurance or are listed as next of kin, said Peter Dyson, an estate planning attorney in Coral Gables, Florida. Most states require adults to appoint someone to make medical decisions, including authorizing treatment, if they become incapacitated. Baylie hadn’t done that, making it harder for her mother and stepfather to be involved in her care, Shawnee Baker said. “Right from the sailboat, they asked us about a health care proxy,” she said. “If we had it on our phone, we would have sent it either by text or email … and they would have told us everything … we would have been guardians. The health care proxy gives you permission as parents to advocate for your child.” Less than three days before the officer’s call, Shawnee Baker had returned from Miami after spending a week getting her daughter settled at college. She’d stayed in a nearby hotel and helped set up her dorm room and decorate it in Tiffany blue – Baylie’s favorite color. To make it homey, Baylie brought aqua and coral accent pillows and throws from her room at home. On a wall was a photo of a butterfly with her favorite quote: “Just when the caterpillar thought it was over, she turned into a butterfly.” Mother and daughter spent the week shopping for dorm supplies, restaurant hopping and soaking up sun at the beach. Most mornings, they shared acai bowls and avocado toast – and reflected on Baylie’s college journey ahead. On Thursday night, Baker left for the airport. Their goodbyes were always emotional. Baylie’s dad left when she was little, and for years, it had mostly been the two of them before she married Scott Baker about a decade ago. They clung to each other and shared tears. Baker walked into the elevator and looked back at her daughter. “She blew me a kiss and shouted again, ‘I love you Momma!” Baker said. Baylie looked vibrant and full of life. On Sunday morning, around 8:20 a.m., the officer called. ‘But I’m her mom.’ A struggle to get answers The Bakers walked into a nightmarish scene at the HCA Florida Kendall Hospital in Miami. Baylie’s friends sat huddled in a corner of the waiting room, their eyes red and puffy. Shawnee Baker gasped when she saw her daughter in the hospital bed. As a former trauma nurse, she’d never seen anyone so severely injured, she said. She was pregnant with the fourth of her five children at the time, and she rushed to the bathroom, gripped the toilet and heaved. She couldn’t breathe. Everything blurred around her in a chaotic whirl. “Her head was enormous… we were just shocked,” she said. “She had been in neurosurgery for nine hours, trying to stop the bleeding in her brain and the various injuries. She was cut from sternum to groin for internal bleeding. They had left her gaping open because they couldn’t close it from all the swelling in her internal organs.” Scott Baker scribbled a note to keep track of the 18 major injuries Baylie had suffered. Doctors spoke to them in medical jargon – epidural hematoma, left subdural hemorrhage, left temporal bone fracture, left occipital condyle fracture – each term more terrifying than the last. Baylie’s mother couldn’t believe she was looking at the same person who’d blown her a kiss nearly three days earlier. “Please, not my baby girl,” she said. The pair had always shared an unspoken bond – why, she wondered, hadn’t she sensed any impending danger? Shawnee Baker asked the medical staff about her daughter’s condition, but doctors couldn’t share all the details. “They asked us if we had a health care proxy because Baylie was over 18. And I said, ‘No, but I’m her mom.’” A hospital policy leads to more questions In a majority of states, if someone becomes incapacitated and hasn’t named a health care proxy, the law uses a hierarchy to determine who can make medical decisions for them, said I. Glenn Cohen, a bioethics expert and health law professor at Harvard University. Shawnee Baker soon discovered that because she was Baylie’s next of kin, the hospital could tell her what was happening. But when it came to making decisions about her daughter’s treatment, her authority was less clear. Without a health care proxy, the hospital had appointed a guardian to advocate for Baylie’s care. Once the Bakers arrived at the hospital, they couldn’t take over the guardianship without a legal challenge that would have taken weeks, Shawnee Baker said. Cohen said it’s unusual for a hospital to appoint a guardian when the parents are available and willing to do it. But Dyson, the Florida attorney, said that under state law a court-appointed guardian has preference in such situations. Hospitals are cautious about granting decision-making authority to family members – even parents – because family dynamics can be complicated and doctors often don’t know the nature of the patient’s relationships with their relatives, he said. For example, Baylie’s father was no longer part of her life, Shawnee Baker said. In a statement, the HCA Florida Kendall Hospital said it complies with federal laws to safeguard patient rights and confidentiality. “Like other hospitals, we are required to follow state and federal laws that are designed to protect patient privacy,” the hospital said in an email to CNN. “The death of a loved one is incredibly difficult, and our hearts go out to this family.” In Baylie’s case, the hospital notified the Bakers of the procedures they were doing to treat Baylie’s injuries but did not involve them in decision-making, Scott Baker added. “They would say we need to do this procedure on her. We’re going to have to roll her into the operating room,” he said. “And we didn’t know much more than that. So they gave us a very superficial overview of what was going on.” And as the Bakers struggled to process Baylie’s condition and navigate these legal hurdles, they slowly started piecing together what had happened to her that night. An impromptu ride with strangers takes a dark turn Baylie studied neuroscience at the University of Miami and was determined to go to medical school. Her friends considered her the “mother hen” of their group – the one who served as a designated driver when they went out and made sure no one spiked their drinks. She loved horses, especially her black Percheron, Dark Secret, which she rode on her equestrian competitions at her alma mater, the Kent School in Connecticut. She was also on the University of Miami’s equestrian team. And as a member of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, her first weekend back on campus was jampacked with social activities. On August 18, Baylie had attended a pool party with her sorority sisters before going to a bar that night with some friends. At 1:14 a.m. the next morning, she ordered a rideshare to return to her apartment on campus, where her friends were waiting. She then canceled her ride minutes later when two men who claimed to be medical students at her university convinced her to join them in their rideshare since they were also heading back to campus, Shawnee Baker said. From the car, Baylie texted and FaceTimed her friends, updating them on her whereabouts. (Her parents shared the text messages with CNN.) In one message, she said she was waiting in the car with one man while the other one went into an apartment above a convenience store and returned with water and straws. Baylie implied the two men appeared suspicious, her mother said. “I’m with some sketch kids,” she texted her friends around 1:45 a.m. “Some random bros … they’re trying to make (me) drink the W (water) too much” A fateful accident on a rainy street Baylie’s friends, who were tracking her phone on a friend-finder app, noticed that she was moving in the opposite direction of the apartment where they planned to meet. Baker said they later learned that the men were in their 30s and not college students. But when investigators interviewed the two men, they gave a different account of what happened, according to a police report. They told investigators that Baylie approached their rideshare outside a Miami bar and agreed to go with them to retrieve a driver’s license from their apartment – with plans to return to the bar. They said she appeared drunk, and they didn’t want to leave her outside alone. Baylie had drank some vodka and Champagne that night, according to the police report. One man went into the apartment and came out with some water for Baylie, which she spilled in the car. When they returned to the bar, one of the men said he went to get more water for her — but she was gone by the time he came back, the man said, according to the police report. Baylie then called her friends and told them she was no longer with the two men but that something was wrong with her. She said she felt woozy and confused, and implored her friends to come get her, her mother said. Video surveillance cameras showed a disoriented Baylie wandering the streets in the rain for about 40 minutes as her friends texted her, according to the police report and her mother. “Baylie, please txt back so I know you’re OK,” one friend said. About 3:15 a.m., a surveillance camera captured a red Hyundai Sonata striking Baylie on South Dixie Highway in Coral Gables, according to the police report. Noticing her stalled location, her friends kept texting her. “Your location hasn’t moved from the middle of South Dixie Highway in like 10 minutes,” one message read. It was about three blocks from her apartment. The driver of the Sonata stopped at the scene to talk to investigators and was not charged, Scott Baker said. For Shawnee and Scott Baker, the footage of Baylie was difficult to watch. “In the video, she walked the way people walk when they’re drugged. They have an impairment to sensory processing,” Shawnee Baker said. “So when the cars would come up and beep their horn at her or flash their lights as she’s crossing the street – she was hit in a six-lane of traffic – she did not respond. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t jump. She didn’t even look at them.” A grim prognosis at another hospital Baylie never opened her eyes or regained consciousness. Without a health care proxy, her mother could not immediately request a toxicology test to determine whether she had been drugged, Shawnee Baker said. “As next of kin, we could make some decisions. Not all. We could not ask for blood work on our daughter because she was an adult … because maybe she didn’t want us to know there was drugs involved,” Shawnee Baker said. Weeks later, investigators obtained Baylie’s hospital blood vials for the toxicology test, according to the police report. The detection window for common date-rape drugs is hours, making quick testing crucial, said Scott Baker. The toxicology test found alcohol and prescribed medication in her system, according to the police report. But without a positive drug test, there was no evidence that Baylie was drugged. No evidence meant no crime and no arrests, Scott Baker said. The Bakers have given up trying to prove their daughter was drugged and to prosecute whoever was responsible. But the setbacks from the lack of a health care proxy did not end there. At first, neurologists believed Baylie would recover and speak within six months, so her parents airlifted her to Massachusetts General Hospital in early September to be closer to home and physical therapy options there, Scott Baker said. But the doctors there spotted additional injuries in her brain, significantly changing the prognosis, he said. An MRI concluded that her injuries were so severe, she would be in a vegetative state for the rest of her life, he said. Without a health care proxy, the Bakers hit yet another legal wall. Massachusetts is one of a few states that don’t have a default surrogate appointment process. If an incapacitated patient has not designated someone to make medical decisions for them, the hospital automatically takes over, said Thaddeus Pope, a bioethicist and professor at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota. “There are a lot of reasons to do the proxy,” Pope said. “Not just because there won’t be anybody (to make decisions). But because the list might put the wrong person in charge.” The Bakers said they told the hospital that Baylie would never want to live in that condition. But even though they understand the hospital was following the law, it didn’t make the pain any easier. “Basically, they said the hospital has guardianship of your daughter. The ethics committee has guardianship of her. So any decisions made have to go through them,” Shawnee Baker said. “Do you have any idea of the salt to the wound for a mother when your child is lying there and they tell you that the hospital now has guardianship?” Massachusetts General Hospital declined to comment, citing privacy issues. So once again, the Bakers had to fight – this time for Baylie’s right to die. Without a proxy telling them whether to turn off the machines keeping Baylie alive, the hospital appointed an ethics team to determine her fate. After some back-and-forth between the Bakers and the hospital the ethics committee relented, and doctors turned off Baylie’s machines on September 27. Shawnee Baker said it’s what Baylie would have wanted. She’d had a conversation with her daughter about the topic the year before, she said. “She said, ‘Mom, you know there’s some things worse than dying.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And she said, ‘Being trapped in a body that doesn’t work. Don’t ever let that happen to me, mom. Promise me.’” A daughter’s loss gives her a voice – and a mission The Bakers hope their ordeal will help educate other families about the health care maze facing young adults. In May, Shawnee Baker published a book, “Baylie,” about her daughter’s story. Some of the proceeds will go to the family’s Baylie’s Wish Foundation, which advocates for safety for college students and educates parents on health care proxies, she said. Until her daughter’s accident, Shawnee Baker said she’d never heard about health care proxies. “Parents only focus on, ‘Is this a good school, and do you have the grades to get into this school?’ And we worry about the dorm room. We don’t look into safety and other policies,” she said. The Bakers also teamed up with 3rd-i, a tracking app designed to make rideshares and other public outings safer. With the app, users share live video, audio, location and their destination to one or more groups of people they create on the platform. In emergency situations, a tap on a SOS button shares the user’s livestream and location with dispatchers — allowing them to act fast, said Dillon Abend, the app’s founder. The Bakers believe the app could have made a big difference in keeping Baylie safe that night. About a month into Baylie’s coma, her mother wrote her a letter. “I prayed for weeks that you’d come back to me, but now I’m praying for you to let go and fly with the angels,” it said. “Heaven is beautiful … you can ride horses all day long. Become a butterfly, my darling, and fly free.” Baylie was gone not long after. Shawnee Baker lost her only daughter at the time but has since welcomed two others. Baylie wanted to be a neurosurgeon so she could help others. And her parents believe she’d want them to share her story to save others from similar heartache. Shawnee Baker said grief has given her a purpose: To be the change for good that her daughter never got to be.