A Mother’s Worst Nightmare: Baylie Grogan, Shawnee Baker, and the Paperwork That Could’ve Changed Everything

It began with a mother’s intuition, an uneasy text from her daughter, and a phone call that would shatter the world as she knew it. In this unforgettable episode of A Fresh Story, Shawnee Baker walks us through the life-altering days that followed a tragic accident involving her daughter Baylie Grogan, a brilliant pre-med student with her entire future ahead of her. As Shawnee and her husband raced to Miami from a remote sailboat off the coast of Maine, they were plunged into a nightmare of trauma, legal barriers, and helplessness—held back not just by grief, but by a medical system that refused to acknowledge her as her daughter’s legal advocate due to the lack of a healthcare proxy.

What followed was a month-long battle for truth, agency, and peace. Shawnee shares how she navigated the heartbreak of watching her daughter remain unresponsive in a hospital bed, denied access to toxicology results, second opinions, and even basic updates on her daughter’s condition. With fierce love and resilience, she fought for Baylie’s right to be released from a life she had once said she never wanted—one without consciousness or freedom. This story is not just about a mother’s worst fear come true—it’s about the laws that failed her, the signs Baylie left behind, and the sacred, painful work of letting go.

But this is also a story of new life. Amid unimaginable loss, Shawnee gave birth to two daughters—both conceived through IVF and wrapped in the spiritual echoes of Baylie’s presence. With a renewed mission, Shawnee now leads the Baylie’s Wish Foundation, advocating for college safety, digital healthcare proxy access, and systemic transparency. This episode is a reckoning with maternal love, legal injustice, and the powerful belief that healing can begin—even when it starts with heartbreak.

Learn more about Baylie’s life at: https://www.baylie.com/

Olivia Howell (00:00) Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to A Fresh Story podcast. This season we are diving into families— all different types of families, all different stories. And today we're really excited to talk to Shawnee.

Shawnee came to us through one of our amazing Fresh Starts experts, Susan, who we adore. She said, "You have to hear this story. You have to talk to her." And as soon as I got your email, I was like, I gotta book you for the show. So why don't you introduce yourself?

Shawnee Baker (00:27) My name is Shawnee Baker. I'm the author and co-founder of the Baylie's Wish Foundation and the book Baylie. I wrote the book to honor my daughter. My daughter was 19 when she passed away. She was in a tragic accident at college at the University of Miami, and the foundation is focused on college safety and also awareness into the tragedy that happened but also what evolved from it.

From our experience in the hospital and understanding the legal forms that we didn't have, that really made a big difference in how that whole situation evolved.

Jenny (01:01) Yeah, I have questions about that, and we can get to that, but that is a truly fascinating part. I know a lot of the work you do is around education about legal forms and next of kin and things like that, but I will save that for later. I'll let you tell your story first.

Olivia Howell (01:01) Yeah. Well, Shawnee, why don't you take us back to the beginning? Tell us where you got started in creating your family.

Shawnee Baker (01:23) So I had my first three children before the age of 23. I was married very young, in college. I graduated as an RN and started working right away. We moved from Toronto, Ontario to South Texas. I worked in San Antonio, Texas, and my husband went to school for a fire science program. We had three little babies.

That was a really hard time for me. I was very young, working crazy hours, with my husband away at college. The little ones were in daycare. I was trying to keep the family afloat, working two full-time jobs to get him through school. I missed a lot of those early childhood years. At the time, I didn’t realize what I had sacrificed. I later resented missing those milestones while all my friends were having kids in their 30s.

Sadly, that marriage ended after about five years due to infidelity. I moved back to the Toronto area for support. Thank goodness for my extended family— grandparents, aunts, uncles. I couldn't have done it without them while raising my family as a single mom.

Fast forward a little bit, I met my husband Scott. He’d been on a career journey—executive roles at places like Goldman, a house in Greenwich, the corporate grind. He always wanted a family but had missed out. I was 39, he was in his late 40s, and he still wanted children. It felt crazy, like I’d missed the boat, but my older kids supported the idea, and I had the chance to stay home and be a stay-at-home mom for the first time.

So we started the IVF journey. I got pregnant with Savannah. We had four viable embryos. Savannah was on the way when Baylie was going into her sophomore year at the University of Miami as a neuroscience major in the pre-med program.

This wonderful new chapter of life came to a crashing halt. I had just dropped Baylie off at school. We'd spent the week getting her set up in her dorm room. I left her on a Thursday. She texted me before I went on a sailboat trip and said, “Mom, I have a really uneasy feeling about this trip. I think it’s a mistake.” I reassured her, told her I’d call her every day.

The last time I spoke to her was Saturday. She told me she was going out with her sorority sisters for one of their 21st birthdays. She’d worked so hard all summer—two jobs and summer classes to lighten her fall semester. She was responsible, never really partied, always the designated driver. But this weekend she wanted to go out and enjoy herself before classes started.

We lost service on the boat that night. The next morning, I got signal and texted her— it bounced back. Then the Miami-Dade Police Department called. “Are you Baylie Grogan’s mom?” Yes. “Your daughter is alive, but there’s been a terrible accident. You need to come to Miami immediately.”

They wouldn’t give any details. Just told us to come. The trauma surgeon said she’d been in surgery all night. She was critical. “You may be coming to say goodbye to your daughter.”

We flew to Miami in a frenzy. When I saw her, I collapsed. She looked worse than any trauma patient I had ever treated. And then came the next blow: we couldn’t get medical information because we weren’t her healthcare proxies. Despite being her parents, HIPAA laws restricted us. The hospital had taken guardianship.

Later, the police reviewed surveillance and suspected she had been drugged. She walked in a dazed, zombie-like state—classic signs of a date-rape drug. Witnesses described her as unresponsive to sound or light. She walked into traffic and was struck.

We asked about toxicology. The hospital hadn’t done it—insurance companies might not pay if drugs or alcohol are involved. Even when the police ordered the test, it was too late. The drugs had left her system.

We wanted second opinions. Neurologists in Boston and New York offered to review her scans. But without a healthcare proxy, we couldn’t even get her medical records.

Baylie spent a month in a coma. Glasgow Coma Score: 3—the lowest possible. She was transferred to Mass General, where they found a brainstem injury missed by the first hospital. A direct hemorrhage. A 1% survival rate. Yet she was breathing on her own, though she'd never open her eyes again.

At that point, we knew: she was trapped. Trapped in a body that couldn’t respond. A year prior, she’d told me after an accident at school, “There’s something worse than dying—being trapped in a body that doesn’t work. Promise me you’ll never let that happen to me.”

We fought to let her go. We went through hospital ethics committees. We contacted her biological father, who hadn’t been in her life since she was six days old, but whose involvement the hospital still required. We had to threaten media coverage. Finally, they let her pass in palliative care.

I was pregnant at the time, under intense psychiatric care, dealing with grief and fear. Savannah was born early. Baylie’s memorial was in October. Savannah was born in January. The grief was overwhelming—postpartum psychosis, suicide watch, family monitoring me around the clock.

And Baylie was still with us. She left notes. She said, “If something happens to me, I’ll come back as one of the embryos.” Before she went to college, she left a card for the baby. A book on her dorm nightstand, Into the Gray Zone, was about being in a coma. The bookmarked page— a girl hit by a car, in a coma. Mass General even enrolled Baylie in the same consciousness trial described in that book.

The MRI confirmed—no brain activity. We had the answer.

After Savannah, we tried another embryo—miscarried. Then, one embryo left. I begged Scott to try again. The transfer date aligned with the anniversary of her accident—August 19th. I couldn’t do it. I pushed it. A 5-day embryo transferred on August 19th? The due date was May 6th—Baylie’s birthday.

Eventually, we transferred the last embryo. It worked. Our daughter, Serafina, was born. Today we’re raising two little girls, and we’re building a foundation in Baylie’s name to educate, protect, and honor her story.

The school never let us tell students what happened. Because we lacked toxicology, no one was prosecuted. Her death was recorded as a pedestrian fatality. But we know better. We want to make college safer.

We’re working to change the laws— making toxicology testing legal without requiring a sexual assault report, and requiring a healthcare proxy form as part of the college admissions process.

We’ve partnered with Trust & Will to make proxy setup accessible. $60 for the form, valid in every state. There's even an app. It’s critical for parents— for accidents, mental health episodes, or hospitalizations. You need access. You need to be able to help your child.

We’re also partnering with a safety app that records rideshares and can send alerts in emergencies. Colleges need to replace outdated blue-light systems with real solutions.

Baylie called for help that night. She knew something was wrong. She told friends she couldn’t use her phone. They couldn’t send help. They watched her stop moving on their GPS. That was the last moment.

Now, every day, we talk about Baylie. Her brothers, her little sisters— she’s part of our lives. Her favorite song was Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. We played it at her service. It's also the song at Serafina’s ballet recital. Full circle.

Her book became an international bestseller. Proceeds go to the foundation. We just want change. We want transparency. Colleges need to report data— how many students have died. No one tells you.

Thank you for helping us tell Baylie’s story.