Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope

by Don & Susie Van Ryn, Newell, Colleen & Whitney Cerak, Mark Tabb (With)

Overview

A grief reversed. A hope deferred. Mistaken Identity tells the unprecedented story of Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak: one buried under the wrong name, and the other in a coma being cared for by the wrong family.

Five lives were lost in a tragic car accident, and the sole survivor was rushed to the hospital, where she remained in a coma for five weeks. Everyone believed that Laura Van Ryn was in a coma, and that Whitney Cerak had died in the crash—until Whitney woke up.

This shocking case of mistaken identity stunned the country and made national news. Would it destroy a family? Shatter their faith? Push two families into bitterness, resentment, and guilt? In Mistaken Identity, the Van Ryn family and the Cerek family describe their ordeal and explore the bond sustaining and uniting them as they deal with their bizarre reversal of life lost and life found.

Mistaken Identity weaves a complex tale of honesty, vulnerability, loss, hope, faith, and love in the face of one of the strangest twists of circumstances imaginable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416584339
Publisher:	Howard Books
Publication date:	03/25/2008
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

The Van Ryn family -- Don, Susie, Lisa, Kenny, and Mark -- of Grand Rapids, Michigan shares an avid interest in outdoor recreation. Don and Susie, married for thirty years, are leaving their chosen professions to dedicate themselves full time to an outdoor camping experience for youth in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Lisa is pursuing a career in physical therapy, and Kenny lives and works in Southern California. Mark is recently married and resides in the Detroit area.

Despite the sorrow surrounding the passing of their daughter Laura,the family continues to be involved in the work of their local church and community.

The Cerak family -- Newell, Colleen, Carly, Whitney and Sandra Sepulveda -- lives in northern Michigan, where Newell is a youth pastor and Colleen is a PE teacher and coach.

Carly graduated from Taylor University and has lived in Africa for the last six months starting a new ministry to street kids.

Sandra took a year from Grand Valley State University and joined with Invisible Children to bring awareness of the plight of children in Uganda. She is currently back at GVSU finishing her nursing degree.

Whitney is now a junior at Taylor University majoring in psychology. She is confident in God's healing and the revelation of the Holy Spirit in her life.

Mark Tabb has authored and co-authored over twenty books, including Living with Less, the Upside of Downsizing Your Life (B&H), and the 2004 Gold Medallion finalist, Out of the Whirlwind (B&H). He also collaborated with Stephen Baldwin on the New York Times bestseller, The Unusual Suspect (FaithWords). Mark is currently working with Alec Baldwin on his book, A Promise to Ourselves (St. Martin’s Press).

Read an Excerpt

1

THE EXCHANGE

Colleen Cerak woke up with a start to the sound of the phone ringing. Her eyes could barely focus as she tried to make out the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was nearly two in the morning, Wednesday, May 31. When she finally reached the phone, she thought she recognized the voice on the other end as a man identified himself as the Grant County coroner. The same man had called five weeks earlier, telling her that Whitney, her eighteen-year-old daughter, had died in an accident along with three other Taylor University students and a university employee. That call also came late at night. Why would the coroner call me in the middle of the night now? she wondered.

"The county chaplain is monitoring this call," the coroner told her. Then he asked what struck Colleen as a very strange question. "Are you alone?"

"What? Yes. I mean no," she said. "Carly, my daughter, is home with me."

"Would you please ask her to listen in on this conversation?"

If she hadn't been so asleep, Colleen might have asked why it mattered if she were alone, and why the coroner had called at such an ungodly hour. But she didn't. Her body was awake, but her mind hadn't caught up with it yet. She climbed out of bed, walked across the hall to Carly's room, and woke her up. "I need you to listen in on this call. I'm going downstairs to get the other phone. Don't hang up," Colleen said.

Carly was sound asleep when her mother threw the cordless phone on her bed. "What? You want me to do what? Why?" Carly asked, but Colleen had already started down the stairs. Half asleep, but already panicking, Carly put the phone to her ear. She listened as her mother asked the man to identify himself again. The moment she heard him say he was the coroner, Carly felt sick to her stomach.

"We now know," the coroner said, "that the accident survivor in the hospital identified as Laura Van Ryn is not in fact Laura. This fact was confirmed earlier this evening through her dental records."

Carly listened upstairs while Colleen was downstairs on the main extension. Neither of them said a word, their minds unable to comprehend what they were hearing. Then the coroner dropped his bombshell. "We have reason to believe your daughter may be alive."

"No. No. That's impossible. We buried her," Colleen said. In her half-awake state, she thought the coroner was saying that Whitney had been alive when she was placed in her casket, meaning the family had buried her alive. The thought horrified her. The coroner quickly clarified what he meant. "We have reason to believe that the girl identified as Laura Van Ryn is, in fact, your daughter Whitney Cerak."

The moment Carly heard the coroner say that Laura was Whitney, she threw down the phone and stormed down the stairs. "No, no, no!" she screamed. "Hang up the phone, Mom. hang up! I can't believe someone would be so cruel as to pull a prank like this. This is the worst thing I've ever heard of in my life!"

"What did you say?" Colleen said to the coroner. She could hardly hear his response.

"Mom, listen to me!" Carly yelled. "There's no way that isn't Laura. Her family and her boyfriend have been right at her side for five weeks. Five weeks! Don't you think they would have noticed if it weren't Laura? A lot of my friends have seen her. Kelly was there! Mom, don't you think my own roommate would have noticed something as obvious as this!? Whitney doesn't look like Laura. Why would someone do this?" She began crying. "Mom, hang up the phone. Hang up, HANG...

Table of Contents

Prologue

1 THE EXCHANGE

2 APRIL 26, 2006

3 ICU

4 COMING TO GRIPS WITH A NEW REALITY

5 WAITING

6 COMFORT IN THE MIDST OF PAIN

7 FROM FORT WAYNE TO SYDNEY AND EVERY POINT IN BETWEEN

8 FIRST MILESTONE

9 "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WHITNEY"

10 TURNING A CORNER

11 A CELEBRATION OF LIFE

12 "HI"

13 "LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN"

14 WAKING UP

15 MISTAKEN IDENTITY

16 TELLING THE FAMILY

17 BACK FROM THE DEAD

18 HOPE IN TRAGEDY

19 AFTER THE HURRICANE

20 FAST FORWARD

21 MOVING AHEAD

Epilogue from Whitney

In Honor of Those Lost

Acknowledgments