Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

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).

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Mistaken Identity

Howard Books

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 UP!"

Finally Colleen asked the coroner, "May I call you back? I really need some time to think."

The coroner seemed taken aback by her question. "Mrs. Cerak, this is a very serious matter. We need you to bring your daughter's dental records to the hospital in Grand Rapids as quickly as possible so that we can make a positive identification."

"I understand that. What's your number there?"

"Mrs. Cerak!"

"May I please have your number?" Colleen's mind could not process what he was telling her; she was in shock. Maybe Carly is right. Maybe this is nothing but a cruel, cruel hoax. Once Colleen had the phone number, she hung up the phone and sank into her chair. Carly sat across from her on the sofa, fuming.

"Who could be so cruel?" Carly asked. Colleen didn't respond. She checked the phone number and discovered that the call had, in fact, come from Marion General Hospital in Indiana, the hospital to which Whitney's body had been taken on the night she died.

"That doesn't mean the call was real," Carly protested. She looked over at her mother. "Mom, you don't actually believe this garbage, do you?" She threw up her hands in frustration. In her mind, Carly believed she had to be the voice of reason in the family. Her father, a youth pastor, was in New York with a group of high school seniors for their annual graduation trip. With him gone, she kicked into full big-sister mode. "Mom, believe me. I know that the girl in the hospital is Laura, not Whitney. I know what I'm talking about. Who are you going to believe, your own daughter or some stranger making prank calls in the middle of the night!?"

Colleen didn't know what to do next. She hesitated to call and awaken her husband, Newell, when she didn't yet have any firm information. Going on this trip had been a hard enough decision for him. It was his first step toward something approaching normalcy in his job since they'd lost Whitney five weeks earlier. If this was in fact a hoax, Colleen saw no reason to make him suffer through it as well. Unsure of where else to turn, she called Newell's best friend and coworker, Pastor Jim Mathis, who had walked with the family through the tragedy of Whitney's death. "Jim, we have a situation here," she said, "and I don't know where else to turn. We just received a phone call..."

"A fake phone call!" Carly shouted in the background.

"We just received a phone call from someone claiming to be the Grant County coroner. He said..." -- Colleen could hardly believe the words were coming out of her mouth -- "he said that Whitney may be alive."

"What?" Jim said. "How?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if the call was real. Would you check it out for me? I don't think I can."

"Sure. What's the number?"

Five minutes later he called back and said, "It looks like we need to go on another road trip."

As soon as she hung up the phone, Colleen called the family dentist for Whitney's dental records, which he said he would bring over right away. Only then did she call her husband. The moment Colleen said his name, Newell knew something was wrong. "Not Carly," he said. "Please tell me that it's not Carly." With Whitney gone, he couldn't bear the thought of something happening to their only surviving daughter.

"No, no, no. Carly's fine. It's uh...it's about Whitney."

"What?"

"I just got a call from the Grant County coroner's office, and they think...they think Whitney may be alive."

"That's impossible," he said. "We buried her. She can't be alive."

"Let me talk to him," Carly yelled in the background and then grabbed the phone out of her mother's hand. "Don't believe any of this, Dad. The phone call said they think Laura is Whitney, but she can't be. My friends saw her. They know Whitney. Believe me, Dad, this is impossible!"

"I know, Carly. I know" was all he could say in response.

Colleen got back on the line. "Jim is going to drive us down to Grand...