With their flowing blonde locks, fresh-faced smiles and all-American good looks, these two co-eds could easily be mistaken for one another in a crowded room.
But in the most tragic of circumstances, those similarities led to an outcome that is too bizarre for even the most imaginative storyteller to conjure up.
In April 2006, Whitney Cerak, then 18, barely survived a devastating crash on I-69 in Indiana involving a semi and a van full of Taylor University students and staff.
But amid the wreckage, emergency crews mistakenly identified Whitney as her fellow student Laura Van Ryn, 22, who died at the scene.
Whitney’s real parents, the Ceraks, were told they had lost a daughter.
And as she lay comatose in the hospital, slowly regaining consciousness, she was surrounded by the caring Van Ryn family — who doctors had urged to look past the tubes, bandages, swelling and apparent physical differences to their battered ‘Laura.’
The eerie case of mistaken identity was not uncovered until a shocking five weeks later, when Laura’s sister Lisa Van Ryn realized something was amiss and started quizzing the delicate Whitney about her recollections.
Upon that agonizing realization, the Van Ryns were confronted with their tragic loss, and the Ceraks learned they had held a funeral for and buried another family’s daughter.
Now, nearly two decades later, Whitney, a married mom-of-three, has bared all about her struggle and how she, the Ceraks and the Van Ryns have rebuilt their lives.
Laura Van Ryn (left) was killed in the crash in 2006, but her identity was mixed up with Whitney Wheeler (right) who was critically injured but survived
Speaking recently on a podcast, Whitney revealed how she overcame the guilt of surviving a crash in which others perished
Speaking recently on the Bayview Podcast, Whitney, a devout Christian, reveals how she came to terms with the ‘survivor’s guilt’ of escaping death when others perished on the night of April 26.
Holding back the tears, she says she was ‘confused’ by why she was spared, even as Laura and other more gifted seniors from her evangelical liberal arts school left the crash scene in body bags.
‘That was a struggle for me, for a while, ’till it clicked in my head,’ she says.
‘That’s who the Lord uses throughout the whole Bible: the weakest, least intelligent, not good speakers, the youngest.’
She added: ‘You can see the Lord’s DNA through the whole thing.’
That fateful night, Whitney, Laura, and seven others were returning from working at a luncheon banquet to the college in Upland, Indiana, when their van was struck by a tractor-trailer that had drifted across the highway.
The crash killed Laura, three other Taylor students, and a university staffer.
In the ensuing chaos, emergency workers mixed up the identities of Laura and Whitney, due to their similar appearances and because their ID cards and other belongings were strewn around the crash site.
Whitney’s family, in Gaylord, Michigan, were informed that their daughter had been killed.
Days later, hundreds turned out for Whitney’s funeral and burial — but it was really Laura’s body going in the ground.
Meanwhile, Whitney was taken with head injuries to Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, where the Van Ryns kept vigil around the bandaged and comatose young women, believing it was Laura.
Five Taylor University students were killed when a semitrailer collided with a Taylor University van on Interstate 69 north of Marion, Indiana, in April 2006
Whitney married Matt Wheeler before the Army engineer was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan
Whitney was so badly injured after the crash that the Van Ryn family believed it was their daughter Laura for five weeks
They were told that, because of the extent of the injuries, everything from the young woman’s eye color to the position of her teeth could have changed.
Because of this, the Van Ryns say they looked past the fact that the convalescent’s teeth appeared to have shifted and, when she opened them, her eyes looked a little bluer than before.
The discrepancies did not end there. The young woman in the hospital bed had a pierced naval — something the Van Ryns had never seen before on their daughter.
In 2008, the family told NBC News that they looked past these differences at the time and were only focused on helping their daughter’s recovery.
They were ‘pieces to a puzzle that we didn’t even know existed,’ sister Lisa Van Ryn said.
As she regained consciousness, Whitney describes being in a confused daze.
Five weeks after the crash, a therapist asked her to write her name, and she was able to spell out ‘Whitney.’
Still, this was put down to her brain injuries.
Even when she mumbled out the words ‘false parents,’ doctors and the Van Ryns remained assured that it was Laura, not Whitney, speaking.
But not everyone was convinced.
When a group of Lisa’s friends visited the hospital and got a first, close-up look at the patient, they glanced at each other awkwardly and went quiet, dad Don Van Ryn said later.
Around that time, sister Lisa was also becoming suspicious.
She’d seen a photo of Whitney and observed the similarities between the two young women.
On May 30, she asked the patient about her parents.
When she named Newell and Colleen Cerak – names that Laura would not have known – Lisa was convinced this was not her sister in the hospital.
Whitney and Matt Wheeler married at the church where her family once held her funeral
Whitney and Matt have three children, now aged between 10 and 13
The Wheelers and their three children nowadays live in Traverse City, Michigan
Staff contacted the Ceraks and obtained Whitney’s dental records, which confirmed that she was the crash survivor, and Laura had died in the high-speed pile up five weeks previously.
The dumbfounded Ceraks were reunited with the daughter they thought they had laid to rest.
Whitney’s grandfather, Emil Frank, described getting his granddaughter back as ‘like a fairy tale.’
And the Van Ryns had to come to terms with their loss, and how they had kept vigil around a hospital bed without realizing the convalescing woman was not their daughter.
On their blog at the time, the VanRyns wrote: ‘Our hearts are aching as we have learned that the young woman we have been taking care of over the past five weeks has not been our dear Laura, but instead a fellow Taylor student of hers, Whitney Cerak.’
Despite this, Don and Susie Van Ryn, other family members and friends, did not leave Whitney’s bedside upon discovering the mix-up and stayed to help the young woman’s recovery.
Speaking on the podcast, Whitney, now 37, explains how at the time she was bewildered by a brain injury and the experience was like a ‘crazy dream.’
‘It took a long time for them to convince me that it wasn’t a dream, that it was real,’ she says.
‘I was so sad about what had happened, and not totally understanding everything either.’
Four months after the crash, Whitney returned to Taylor University, where she graduated three years later.
She married her longtime boyfriend, Matt Wheeler, also from Gaylord, and the couple has three children. She took her husband’s name.
Matt has spoken of his own heartache at believing he’d lost Whitney, carrying the casket at her funeral, and nights spent crying on his porch.
Like Whitney, he describes the couple’s journey in religious terms.
‘Every time I closed my eyes, I had the same dream,’ he told the Nothing Is Wasted Podcast in 2018.
‘I was looking at a casket, Whitney was in the casket, but her chest was rising and falling with breath.’
Eerie: The gravestone of Whitney was laid following her funeral despite the fact she was alive and injured in an Indiana hospital
Unbreakable bond: (from L-R) Don, Susie, and Lisa VanRyn with Whitney and her parents Colleen and Newell Cerak
In 2006, four students and a college employee were killed when their van was struck by a tractor in Indiana
Those images ‘haunted me for those five weeks,’ he says – but they served a higher purpose.
‘It was God’s way of telling me that she was still alive,’ he said.
They got married in Gaylord in 2012, in the same church where Whitney’s funeral was held.
Matt served in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now manages a wood waste business.
Whitney says she has the ‘best job in the world’ as a school counselor and their three kids are aged between 10 and 13.
Nearly two decades on from the crash, the Van Ryns and the Ceraks remain close, connected by faith and the shared tragedy.
We ‘get to see each other a lot, or we’re just in like, constant communication,’ says Whitney.
‘They’re super cool. Just an amazing family.’
On the tenth anniversary of the incident, Whitney returned to Taylor University to speak about how she had struggled to complete her studies.
She also revealed what it’s like to have a funeral held for you when you’re still alive.
She joked that she was surprised to find out she wasn’t very good at sports, according to one speaker at the memorial, and that her sister thought she didn’t shower often enough.
‘A lot of people wonder what will people say about you at your funeral,’ she said.
‘I know.’
The incident later prompted Indiana lawmakers to enact stricter guidelines regarding coroners identifying victims of fatal crashes.
It also led to more cable barriers being installed along interstate medians.
Truck driver Robert Spencer, who caused the crash after falling asleep at the wheel, was later arrested on five counts of reckless homicide. He pleaded guilty and served two years of a four-year sentence.
