With their smooth blonde ditches, a soft face smiling and the extreme appearance of the All-American, these two Co-deds could easily be done in a busy room.
But in the most tragic circumstances, those similarities led to an outcome that is too bizarre for even the most imaginative narrator to call.
In April 2006, Whitney Cerak, then 18, hardly survived a devastating crash on i-69 Indiana In which a semi and a van full of students and employees of Taylor University are involved.
But in the midst of the wreck, emergency staff wrongly identified Whitney as her fellow student Laura van Ryn, 22, who died on the spot.
Whitney's real parents, the Ceraks, were told that they had lost a daughter.
And while she was comatose in the hospital and slowly getting consciousness back, she was surrounded by the worries of Ryn's caring – who had encouraged doctors to look along the tubes, connections, swelling and apparent physical differences with their battered 'Laura'.
The creepy thing of a wrong identity was not discovered until a shocking five weeks later, when Laura's sister Lisa van Ryn realized that something was wrong and the delicate Whitney began to interview her memories.
In that painful awareness, the Van Ryns were confronted with their tragic loss, and the Ceraks heard that they had kept a funeral and buried the daughter of another family.
Now, almost two decades later, Whitney, a married mother of three, has bare everything about her battle 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 with Whitney Wheeler (right) who was seriously injured but survived
Whitney recently spoke on a podcast, revealed how she had overcome the blame for surviving a crash in which others died
Recently on the Bayview Podcast, Whitney, a pious Christian, reveals how she came to terms with the 'Survivor's Guilt' of escaping death when others died in the night of 26 April.
She stopped the tears and says that she was 'confused' by why she was spared, even when Laura and other more gifted seniors from her Evangelical Liberal Arts School left the Crashcene in Body bags.
“That was a struggle for me for a while,” until it clicked in my head, “she says.
“That is who the Lord uses the entire Bible: the weakest, least intelligent, not good speakers, the youngest.”
She added: “You can see the DNA of the Lord through the whole thing.”
That fateful night, Whitney, Laura and seven others came back from working on a lunch house to the college in Upland, Indiana, when their van was hit by a tractor trailer that had been driven off the highway.
The crash killed Laura, three other Taylor students and a university employee.
In the subsequent chaos, care providers mixed the identities of Laura and Whitney, because of their similar performances and because their ID cards and other possessions were littered around the crash site.
The Whitney family, in Gaylord, Michigan, was informed that their daughter had been murdered.
Days later, hundreds before the funeral and funeral of Whitney – but it was really Laura's body in the ground.
In the meantime, Whitney was taken with head injury to the Hospital Parkview in Fort Wayne, where the Van Ryns kept vigilant around the connected and comatose young women, in the conviction that it was Laura.
Five students from Taylor University were killed when a semitrailer collided in April 2006 with a Taylor University bus on Interstate 69 north of Marion, Indiana
Whitney married Matt Wheeler before the alloy engineer was used in Iraq and Afghanistan
Whitney was so badly injured after the crash that Ryn's family believed it was their daughter Laura for five weeks
They were told that, because of the extent of the injuries, everything of the eye color of the young woman could have changed the position of her teeth.
As a result, the Van Ryns say that they looked beyond the fact that the teeth seemed to have been 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 navy – something the Van Ryns had never seen on their daughter before.
In 2008 the family told NBC News that they then looked beyond these differences and were only aimed at helping their daughter's recovery.
They were “bad luck in a puzzle that we didn't even know they existed,” said Sister Lisa van Ryn.
While she was conscious again, Whitney describes in a confused fan.
Five weeks after the crash, a therapist asked her to write her name, and she was able to spell 'Whitney'.
Yet this was put on her brain injury.
Even when she muttered the words 'false parents', doctors and the Van Ryns were sure that it was Laura, not Whitney, speaking.
But not everyone was convinced.
When a group of Lisa's friends visited the hospital and received a first, close-up at the patient, they looked at each other uncomfortably and became silent, Don Don of Ryn said later.
Around that time, sister Lisa also became suspicious.
She had seen a photo of Whitney and saw the similarities between the two young women.
On 30 May she asked the patient about her parents.
When she mentioned Newell and Colleen Cerak – names that Laura had not known – Lisa was convinced that this was not her sister in the hospital.
Whitney and Matt Wheeler married in the church where her family once held her funeral
Whitney and Matt have three children, now between 10 and 13 years old
The Wheelers and their three children now live in Traverse City, Michigan
The staff contacted the Ceraks and obtained Whitney's dental records, who confirmed that she was the survivor of the crash, and Laura died in the fast pile five weeks earlier.
The bewildered Ceraks were reunited with the daughter they thought they had laid to rest.
Whitney's grandfather, Emil Frank, described that he got his granddaughter back as 'as a fairy tale'.
And the Van Ryns had to get their loss to pure, and how they had kept Wake around a hospital bed without realizing that the recovering woman was not their daughter.
On their blog at the time, the Vanryns wrote: “Our hearts hurt as we have learned that the young woman we have taken care of in the last five weeks has not been our dear Laura, but instead a colleague Taylor -Student from her, Whitney Cerak.”
Nevertheless, Don and Susie van Ryn, other family members and friends, did not leave Whitney's bed behind discovering the mix and kept helping to help the young woman's recovery.
On the podcast, Whitney, now 37, explains how she was stunned by a brain injury and the experience was like a 'crazy dream'.
“It took a long time before they convince me that it wasn't a dream, that it was real,” she says.
“I was so sad about what had happened and I didn't understand everything.”
Four months after the crash, Whitney returned to Taylor University, where she graduated three years later.
She married her old friend, Matt Wheeler, also from Gaylord, and the couple has three children. She took her husband's name.
Matt spoke about his own heartache by believing that he had lost Whitney, had worn the coffin at her funeral and spent nights crying on his veranda.
Just like Whitney, he describes the journey of the couple in religious terms.
“Every time I closed my eyes, I had the same dream,” he said that the podcast was wasted nothing in 2018.
“I looked at a coffin, Whitney was in the coffin, but her chest rose and fell in breath.”
Eerie: Whitney's tombstone was laid after her funeral despite the fact that she was still alive and was injured in a hospital in Indiana
Unbreakable Bond: (Van LR) Don, Susie and Lisa Vanryn with Whitney and her parents Colleen and Newell Cerak
In 2006, four students and a university employee were killed when their van was hit by a tractor in Indiana
Those images “chased me for those five weeks,” he says – but they served a higher goal.
“It was God's way to tell me that she was still alive,” he said.
They were married in Gaylord in 2012, in the same church where the funeral of Whitney was held.
Matt served in Afghanistan and Iraq and now manages a Wood Waste company.
Whitney says she has the 'best job in the world' as a school advisor and their three children are between 10 and 13 years old.
Almost two decades after the crash, the Van Ryns and the Ceraks remain close by faith and the shared tragedy.
We get to see each other a lot, or we are just in like, constant communication, “says Whitney.
“They are super cool. Just a great family. '
On the tenth anniversary of the incident, Whitney returned to Taylor University to talk about how she had struggled to complete her studies.
She also revealed what it is like to have a funeral for you if you are still alive.
She joked that she was surprised to find out that she was not very good at Sport, according to a speaker in the monument, and that her sister thought she didn't shower often enough.
“Many people wonder what people will say about you at your funeral,” she said.
“I know.”
The incident later led the Indiana legislators to carry out stricter guidelines with regard to coroners who identified victims of fatal accidents.
It also led to more cable barriers that were installed along interstate median.
Truck driver Robert Spencer, who caused the crash after falling asleep behind the wheel, was later arrested on five counts of reckless murder. He pleaded guilty and served for two years of a prison sentence of four years.
