In one small Michigan town, they are talking excitedly about welcoming home a beloved friend they had thought they had buried. In another, the news is still sinking in that a young woman believed to have survived a horrific crash five weeks ago is dead.
“We’re so elated, it’s almost unbelievable,” said Joe Duff, city manager of Whitney Cerak’s hometown of Gaylord, population 3,700. “But the community’s kind of torn because there’s another community and another family that’s going through exactly the kind of terrible loss that we went through.”
Cerak, a 19-year-old student at Indiana’s Taylor University, was thought to have died until a stunning case of mistaken identity was discovered: She had been confused with fellow student Laura VanRyn, who was incorrectly thought to have survived the wreck.
Cerak strongly resembled VanRyn, and she suffered injuries that left her in a coma and a neck brace, with a swollen face and broken bones, cuts and bruises.
Hair stylist Mandy Harkema voiced a common sentiment in VanRyn’s hometown of Caledonia, a community of 1,100 people about 150 miles from Gaylord: “I just wonder how it was mixed up for so long.”
VanRyn, 22, and Cerak were among 10 students and staff members riding in a university van when it was hit by a tractor-trailer that crossed the median of Interstate 69 on April 26. Five people were killed, including a woman everyone thought was Cerak.
VanRyn’s relatives stood vigil at the woman’s bed at a rehabilitation center in Grand Rapids. The family kept a blog in which they detailed the many small steps she made toward recovery: feeding herself applesauce, playing Connect Four with a therapist.
Identified herself as Whitney
But as her condition improved, the two families gradually realized that the young woman was not VanRyn after all.
She replied “Whitney” several times in recent days after VanRyn’s parents addressed her as “Laura,” Spectrum Health spokeswoman Anne Veltema said. During a recent therapy session, staff members asked her to write her name, and she scrawled “Whitney Cerak.”
The Grant County, Ind., coroner’s office apologized for the error on Wednesday. Coroner Ron Mowery said students had identified the survivor as VanRyn but no scientific testing was conducted.
“I can’t stress enough that we did everything we knew to do under those circumstances, and trusted the same processes and the same policies that we always do,” Mowery said. “And this tragedy unfolded like we could never have imagined.”
The VanRyn family’s blog announced that a memorial service for Laura had been scheduled for Sunday in Kentwood, a Grand Rapids suburb.
The family posted Psalm 18 on the blog Thursday, followed by a message affirming faith in Jesus: “He is there for all of us and for you. God’s Word is sufficient, no matter what your circumstance.”
The Cerak family will take over the blog and continue updating readers, said Debbie Harlukowicz, office manager at the Gaylord Evangelical Free Church, where Whitney’s father, Newell, is youth minister.
Although tempered by sympathy for the VanRyn family, the mood was happy in Gaylord, where high school students planned a spaghetti dinner next week to help cover the Ceraks’ expenses.
“Her loss was such a hit to the community,” Gaylord High School Principal Lori Pearson said. “There will be a lot of welcoming arms.”
Joy for family
Emil Frank, Cerak’s grandfather, said the young woman’s mother was at her side. Cerak’s father, who had been on a trip to New York, arrived to see her for the first time Wednesday night.
“He just wept and wept,” Frank said Thursday.
Whitney Cerak is doing “very well” and talking more, Frank said. She had her hair done, put on lipstick and paged her nurse to chat, he said.
A month ago, an overflow crowd of more than 1,400 people turned out for what they thought was Cerak’s funeral in Gaylord. The young woman — VanRyn, it turned out — was laid to rest under a gravestone with Cerak’s name on it.
Frank said he was unsure how much Cerak knows about what happened but doubted she knew the full story.
“Someday when she finds out, she’s going to really say, ‘I’ve had an experience of a lifetime.’ She’ll use it to give God praise for everything,” he said.