Following tragedy, parents urge families to have health care proxies for adult children
A New Hampshire family is urging parents to be legally prepared to act on their adult children's behalf in an emergency after they learned in the worst way possible that they were not.
that Shawnee Baker never imagined she would write, it's August 2018, and she is on a sailing vacation with her husband when a call comes in. Baker's 19-year-old daughter, Baylie Grogan, is critically hurt.
"I can't even begin to describe the shock and the fear when we saw how Baylie looked at that time," Shawnee Baker said. "I've never seen anyone that bad."
"She was unrecognizable," said Scott Baker, Grogan's stepfather.
A premed student at the University of Miami, Grogan had just returned for the fall semester. While out with friends, she got separated. An Uber receipt shows she ordered a ride for 1:14 a.m. but canceled it at 1:20 a.m.
In surveillance videos obtained by News 9 Investigates, Grogan entered a different rideshare vehicle with two men. It's not clear she knew them, and in a text, she called them "sketchy."
At 1:31 a.m., the vehicle pulled over, and one man exited before returning with a cup at 1:36 a.m. In a 1:44 a.m. text, Grogan suggested that the men wanted her to drink the water.
They were dropped off at the same pickup location, but at 2:38 a.m., Grogan sent a text to a friend saying that she was coming to that location 2 miles away.
Just after 3 a.m., a witness told police that Grogan walked directly into oncoming traffic and was hit.
With Grogan in a coma, a legal complication prevented her mother, who is a nurse, from requesting an immediate toxicology screen for date rape drugs and making any medical decisions on her behalf.
"You assume that you're going to have that right as a parent, that you're going to be the next of kin and you'll be able to make all decisions, but it doesn't work that way," Shawnee Baker said. "The law isn't structured that way. They protect the privacy of the adult child."
In the eyes of the law, turning 18 marks a threshold of responsibility.
"You need to appoint someone who will step into your shoes and make decisions for you, primarily financially and medically, if you can't do that yourself," said attorney Sally Mulhern, a founding partner of Mulhern & Scott.
When Grogan was transferred from Miami to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston without a health care proxy, her family hit the same legal wall.
"It was really adding salt to the wound," Shawnee Baker said. "Taking away your right as a parent, talking about having to get guardianship of your own biological child."
"The vast majority of parents don't recognize or realize that once their kids turn 18, in the eyes of the medical community, they're adults, and parents are no longer entitled to any information for their children or to make decisions for their children," said Scott Baker.
The Bakers pleaded with the hospital, saying they knew Grogan's wishes were never to be kept alive in that condition. Still, it was not their call.
"At that point, we were just praying that the hospital would stop intervening and just let her go," Shawnee Baker said. "She needed to be free."
"At the end of the day, because we did not have a health care proxy, the decision to let Baylie go was not our decision, it was the hospital's decision," Scott Baker said.
Hearst sister station WMUR reached out to MGH officials for comment on this story; they did not respond to our request.
Six weeks after the incident, Grogan died.
Her mother's book and the are a call to action for , such as the 3rd-i app, which can track an emergency in real time.
"We want to change a culture of being that proactive tool," said Dillon Abend, the founder of 3rd-i Technology Inc. "Hey, you're going live, your trusted contacts are seeing and hearing everything that's going on, and when that moment does happen, they're going to be there."
Although the exact circumstances of that night are unknown, and no charges were ever filed in Grogan's death, her family wants her life to cause a change for someone else.
"We do this in her honor, but everything we do, Baylie is with us, and she is helping us along the way," Shawnee Baker said.
