Whitney Cerak

On April 26, 2006, a van load of students from Taylor University collided with a tractor trailer. Five of the students were killed and four others seriously injured including one who was left in a coma. Whitney Cerak was one of the five who were killed and over one thousand people attended her funeral. Meanwhile, one of the four survivors, Laura VanRyn, heavily bandaged and in a coma, was clinging to life in a hospital. Over the coming days, VanRyn would start to improve to the point where she was talking. Her boyfriend seemed to notice something odd about the way she was talking, as did her roommate. Her father became alarmed when she referred to him using a pet name he did not recognize. When she was finally able to write down her name, the name she wrote was not Laura VanRyn. It was Whitney Cerak. Only then did the parents of these two young people realize that the identities of the two girls had been accidentally mixed up. Both shared similar facial features, hair color and texture, and were of similar physical size and build. The body of Laura VanRyn had been buried in a grave with the tombstone of Whitney Cerak. Whitney Cerak fully recovered and graduated from college in 2009.