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they zbrierks this may sound horrible and please understand this, how i say this, would it have almost been easier to lose laura the night of the accident than after five weeks of what happened? i don t know. we talk about that a little bit, but losing your child, your daughter, your son, whenever it happens, it s not supposed to happen. in the midst of their grief, there was also dread. what did whitney s family think of them? the families met at the rehab center. shortly after the ceraks were reunited with whitney. i think suzy had some of those feelings of, you know, they re going to hate us and, you know, we ve kept them from their daughter all this time and but it was the look on colleen s face, wasn t it? mm-hmm. comforting? compassion. compassion. she knew she would know exactly how i was feeling at that moment. ....
Do. but i didn t even know if we needed do it at that point. i just said, can i call you back? i ran downstairs. i told my mom, whoever this is, i don t know why they re doing this, but this isn t real. i knew for sure that there was no way that whitney was alive especially because laura s friends are some of my really close friends. they know whitney through me. and even one of my closest friends went and visited, and she s really close with whitney. they never said anything about it. so i knew for sure there was no way it was whitney. nevertheless, at 2:00 a.m., colleen called the family dentist, who agreed to pull whitney s records. schenn she called her husband newell. i know because the edge in her voice that there s something up, and i go my thought immediately i said, not carly! i just said, not carly. thinking that maybe carly had been in some accident. ....
i said, well, my daughter s home. they said, could you get her on the phone? so i got out of bed. and still not really thinking that clearly. give carly the phone, wake her up. and i went downstairs to get on the other extension. and that s when they said, we have reason to believe that your daughter, whitney, is alive. a statement so unexpected, so overwhelming, she couldn t even comprehend it at first. you know, then you go really your whole body goes, oh, now, i know that s not true. we buried our daughter. and i said we know for sure that the girl in the hospital in grand rapids is not laura van ryn and we think that it s whitney. could you get some dental records and come down here? colleen, at this point, how high up in your body did you allow that swell of hope to rise? there wasn t any hope at that point. it was more of like a duty. you know, just close this door. i know it s not whitney. it s something that we needed to ....
About it one day and i was like, dad, i don t get this. why me? he s like, whitney, why not you? so, for five weeks back in 2006, this was simply not a possible picture, right? what s it like to look over now and see this family as one? it s a constant reminder, constant reminder of what happened that night but at the same time, then, i looked down the couch here and i see i see my family and it just brings me tremendous joy. colleen? i ll cry. it s okay. this is completeness right here. it feels good just to be together like this. whitney visited for the first time the cemetery where her parents buried the woman they thought was her. you ve actually listened to a tape of your funeral ceremony. ....
it was just we kept on saying her name. you know, like whitney. and she would just she was like shaking her head. yes, like, yes, it s whitney. you know, and it was pretty pretty special. five weeks before, whitney s father, newell, had been on a trip. colleen had to call then and tell him whitney was dead. he was on a trip again this time. but this call was different. colleen goes, it s whitney. and i just immediately fell to the floor. i go, no. i go, hang up the phone. so she hung up, and i called her back. because i just didn t believe it. it was like a dream. he had to make me call back. so i called back and she said i m standing here and it s whitney. and i just i go the first thought in my head was, is there something wrong with her? what does she look like? what does she look like? ....