Ashes were given to his family. But he wasn't dead.

Tyler Chase's first sign that he might be dead came at a grocery store. He had food stamps, but his benefits card didn't work.

The next sign was when he contacted Oregon state officials, who told him a death certificate had been filed in his name.

Then, weeks later, the most disturbing development occurred: an urn of ashes had been sent to his family and was sitting in his cousin's closet.

In reality, he was still very much alive.

Mr. Chase's life spanned years of drug use, homelessness, broken family ties and a bureaucracy that documented his death without his fingerprints or any immediate family present when the body believed to be his was cremated.

He started using methamphetamines as a teenager, and after the death of his mother in 2020, he plunged into a dark period of serious addiction and crime. He was subsequently arrested in January 2023 on several charges, including burglary and drug possession.

“My life was a mess,” Mr. Chase, 22, said in a recent telephone interview.

He was eventually released to a temporary housing facility in Portland, Oregon, on the condition that he complete an addiction recovery program. In early October, when he learned of the death certificate, Mr. Chase had been sober for seven months and was looking for work, he said.

“Obviously you can't really apply for places when you're dead.”

“I told you so.”

Just weeks after the convenience store incident, the threads of the grim confusion began to unwind, revealing mistakes that left one family failing to notify their deceased loved one and the other family mourning the loss of Mr. Chase .

In mid-December, an officer at the Portland Police Bureau showed up at Mr. Chase's temporary housing facility and questioned why he was looking for the documents of a man identified by officials as dead.

Mr. Chase recalled seeing his photo in the hands of an officer, a look of disbelief on his face. “Never in my 20 years of service,” Mr. Chase recalled the officer saying, “have I had to deal with anything like this.”

“I thought, yeah, I told you so.”

The next evening, the lead investigator from the Multnomah County Medical Examiner's Office visited Mr. Chase to explain his mistake, he said.

Months earlier, another male resident of the recovery center had been found dead of a fentanyl overdose, with Mr. Chase's wallet believed to have been stolen, he recalled the investigator telling him. Mr. Chase recalled losing his wallet, and he described the other resident as a few years older, smaller and thinner with red hair. Mr. Chase said he tried to convince the man to stay in the program, but he left.

The mistaken identity occurred because the dead man was carrying Mr. Chase's wallet and temporary driver's license, the medical examiner's office confirmed in a statement.

“I had an out-of-body experience.”

Mr. Chase, who had been receiving treatment for years, had lost contact with his family, including his father. When authorities told them he had died of a drug overdose, they had little reason to doubt it.

The last family member he had contact with was his cousin Latasha Rosales, 35.

While the investigator's office said Mr. Chase's immediate family had declined to view the body before cremation, his father, Toby Chase, said he was never asked about it. Neither did the rest of his family, Ms. Rosales said.

“We deeply regret that the misidentification occurred,” the medical examiner's office said in its statement. The agency said it has since launched a “comprehensive review” of its procedures and that in the future it will require that bodies found with temporary identification also be identified by fingerprints at the time of the death investigation.

J. Keith Pinckard, the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, said in an email that the misidentification of the dead was “quite rare” and that he had encountered only one or two cases in his career. “I'm not aware of any patterns,” said Dr. Pinckard.

Mr Chase's niece, Ms Rosales, said her family were distraught, but not shocked, when they were informed of his death. She last saw Mr Chase after his mother's death in 2020, but had gradually lost contact.

“The next thing I hear about him is he died of a drug overdose,” she said. The family raised more than $1,000 to have the body cremated, and Ms. Rosales collected the urn of ashes in October, she said.

A few nights before Christmas, Mrs. Rosales received a call from a private number informing her that Mr. Chase was still alive. “I thought I was being fooled,” she said. Acknowledging the surreal nature of the call, a woman's voice asked Ms. Rosales if she wanted to switch to video. “Then she pointed the phone at my cousin,” Ms. Rosales said of the caller. “It felt like I was having an out-of-body experience.”

“That could have been me.”

The next day the cousins ​​met in person. Mr. Chase was not dead or sick, but tall, strong, and healthier than Mrs. Rosales had seen him in years.

“I just felt like I should have done more after his mother died,” Ms. Rosales said. “I can be there for him now – I can do the things I wish I could have done sooner.”

Days later, Mr. Chase, who had since been hired by an organization that helps the homeless in Portland, spent Christmas with Ms. Rosales and her children. He said the mix-up with another man who had overdosed made him realize “it could have been me.”

The joy of the reunion, Ms. Rosales said, is tainted with confusion and anger at authorities, who she said saw the body as just another dead addict. Fentanyl and methamphetamine caused a record number of deaths among people experiencing homelessness in Multnomah County in 2022, according to a report released in December.

“I had ashes from someone's child, and they didn't even know their loved one was dead,” Ms. Rosales said.

“That's what really makes me sad about the situation,” she added. “They just treat them like they're nobody.”

Sheelagh McNeill And Susan C. Beachy research contributed.