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The envelope Alexis Waggoner was about to open held more than just a name.
It held her future – the place where she would fine-tune her skills as an obstetrician/gynecologist and begin a new chapter in her life.
Along with the usual trials and tribulations medical students go through to make it to this day, known as Match Day, Alexis had suffered through a hell her classmates will likely never know in her journey in becoming a physician.
On April 1, 2006 her boyfriend of more than a year, 27-year-old medical student Brian Shaffer, disappeared after a night of drinking with friends.
According to Columbus Police Sgt. John Hurst, who continues to investigate Shaffer’s case, there are no solid leads to indicate whether Shaffer was the victim of a crime or disappeared on his own.
“We really have nothing to substantiate either claim,” he said.
Since then Alexis, a 26 year-old Toledo native, has experienced a rollercoaster of emotions – juggling school work, searching for Shaffer, dealing with a media whirlwind and trying to achieve some sort of normalcy.
“I would say probably for at least the first nine months to a year, it’s sort of one big blur,” she said. “It was a long time of honestly being miserable and just being sad, but working. Working to find Brian, working on school, trying to keep my mind busy and wondering how and when I was going to start feeling better”
Shaffer was last seen on surveillance video entering the Ugly Tuna bar in the South Campus Gateway, a place Alexis still avoids.
“Except for going up there to look around after all this happened, I have never gone there … I never did at the time because it was too painful,” she said. “Now it’s certainly better but it pops into my head and I wonder if there are any signs left up.”
But throughout the ordeal, Alexis maintained her focus on school work and will graduate on time in June.
“There was a part of me that thought you know what, if he’s not going to be back, and he and I aren’t going to be able to finish medical school together, by golly I’m going to graduate with my friends,” she said.
Now all she had to do was open the envelope.
‘The Brian shrine’Alexis’s friends describe her as compassionate, intelligent and motivated woman whose brush with tragedy made her stronger.
“In the past two years, Alexis has demonstrated an impressive amount of confidence, grace, poise and self-reliance,” said Beth Gaskill, a 27-year old medical student. “When I met her four years ago, she was an enthusiastic, optimistic college graduate excited about the challenges ahead of her in medical school, but I do think she lacked a bit of self-confidence.”
While Alexis has healed considerably since her nightmare began two years ago, she still struggles with some issues. She worries when her brother is not home when he said he would be, or if friends go out by themselves.
“I think if nothing else I probably will just end up being a little more protective of the people who are close to me and the people that I love, and they’re just going to have to be cool with the fact that if they go somewhere, they have to call me and let me know they’re OK,” she said. “I do get a little bit more nervous when I think I’m going to hear from someone and I don’t, or if someone should be somewhere and they’re not.”
Her brother, 24-year-old Ryan Waggoner, said there have been several milestones in his sister’s path to recovery throughout the past two years – including throwing away what he and his father called ‘the Brian shrine’, which contained photos and personal items Alexis had collected.
“She cleaned her room one day and got rid of a lot of stuff. She went over the Brian shrine and just took it down with no emotions, no crying,” Ryan said. “She was just ready to part with it. That was a good day.”
Even without the material reminders of her lost love, Alexis remains unable to completely escape thoughts of Shaffer and continues to think about him daily. But what happened that spring night still remains a mystery to her.
“At the beginning, every day I would think something different all the time,” she said. “At the beginning, the thought of him running away and just leaving me like this just angered me but there’s a part of me that thinks it’s easier to accept that someone else had done something to him because it wouldn’t have been his idea.”
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EricAbout six months ago, Alexis decided she was ready to begin dating again.
“I would say it was about a year-and-a-half afterwards when I started feeling like a normal person again, because that was about the time that I told my mom that I thought I was at the point where maybe I could go out and eat dinner with someone again and get out there and have fun again,” she said.
But being as committed to someone as she was to Shaffer was going to take time, and Alexis worried how other men would react to her story.
Then her mother, Melanie, introduced Alexis to Eric Noss, a 32-year-old framing contractor from Toledo who was working on her parents’ house.
Melanie told Noss about Alexis’ ordeal before the two met, and he said he was not at all deterred by the story.
“Everyone has a past, and to me Alexis is no different,” he said. “Obviously she has been through a life-altering situation that most of us could only dream about in our nightmares, but she is moving on and seems to be looking to the future.”
Alexis said Noss has been more than understanding about the experience – letting her talk about it when she wants to, respecting when she does not and even asking a few gentle questions every so often. The two have been seriously dating for almost five months.
“He likes to hear about medicine, and I think it’s really cool to see the things that he’s built and the things he’s capable of doing,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of mutual respect, and we just enjoy being around each other.”
Noss said he was not jealous of what Shaffer and Alexis had, but is excited for their future together.
“It’s not my intention to replace their memories, just (to) make new ones,” he said.
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Opening the envelopeInside Alexis Waggoner’s envelope were the words Riverside Methodist Hospital, which is in Columbus.
She will spend the next four years completing her residency there and training to become an obstetrician/gynecologist.
Though not far from the campus where she found love and lost it so tragically, Alexis will embark on a new adventure.
“It does seem like being at OSU, and being around all the places he and I were together at the time, it is a little bit of a closure again,” she said.
“And it’s absolutely the
closing of a chapter.”
Mary Dannemiller can be reached at [email protected].
