Mistaken Identity: Two Families, One Survivor, Unwavering Hope

1THE 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