 “Your son is alive.” 
 
 Frank J. Kerrigan, 82, couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was May 23, at night, and he clutched the phone at his home in Wildomar. In this Friday, June 23, 2017 photo, Frank Kerrigan holds onto a a funeral card for his son Frank, near Wildomar, Calif. Kerrigan, who thought his son had died, learned he buried the wrong man. (Photo courtesy of the Kerrigan family) 
 
 Frank M. Kerrigan’s family is taking action against the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office claiming negligence after finding out that they buried whom they thought was Frank M. Kerrigan, but found out days later that he was still alive. (Photo by Andrew Foulk, Contributing Photographer) 
 
 Only now it seemed that the younger Frank, who was standing on the patio of Shinker’s former home in Stanton, had risen from the grave. "Bill (Shinker) put my son on the phone," Kerrigan said. “He said ‘Hi Dad’.” 
 
 It was all part of a bigger mix-up that involved a man found dead in Fountain Valley, a lack of fingerprint records and a mistaken photo I.D. THE BEGINNING 
 
 The ordeal began May 6, when the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department told the older Kerrigan to contact the Orange County Coroner. He placed that call and soon was told that his son, who is 57, suffers from mental illness and is homeless, had been found dead behind a Verizon store in Fountain Valley. Kerrigan says he asked if he should identify the body, but a woman at the coroner’s office told him that would be unnecessary since the man had already been identified through fingerprints. "When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them," Kerrigan said. “If he wasn’t identified by fingerprints I would’ve been there in heartbeat.” 
 
 Meanwhile, Frank’s sister, 56-year-old Carole Meikle, of Silverado, also learned that her brother had died. “It was a very difficult situation for me to stand at a pretty disturbing scene. Frank's sister, 56-year-old Carole Meikle of Silverado, went to the spot where he died to leave a photo of him, a candle, flowers and rosary beads. Earlier, in the funeral home, the grieving Kerrigan had looked at the man in the casket and touched his hair, convinced he was looking at his son for the last time. “I didn’t know what my dead son was going to look like.” 
 
 Still, all along there were red flags that the dead man wasn’t Frank. On May 12, the family held a $20,000 funeral that drew about 50 people from as far away as Las Vegas and Washington state. The body was interred at a cemetery in Orange about 150 feet from where Kerrigan's wife is buried. Exactly how the Coroner’s Office misidentified Frank isn’t clear. Doug Easton, an attorney hired by Kerrigan, said coroner's officials apparently weren't able to match the corpse's fingerprints through a law enforcement database and instead identified Kerrigan by using an old driver's license photo. Meikle added that when her family told county officials that the younger Frank was alive, they were told that authorities had re-entered the man’s fingerprints into the database, on June 1, and learned they matched someone else. The Kerrigan family has been given the man’s name from the Coroner’s Office, but that identification has not been independently confirmed, said Easton, who plans to file a notice of claim next week against Orange County as a precursor to a lawsuit. “We thought we were burying our brother,” said Meikle. “Someone else had a beautiful send-off. It’s horrific.” 
 
 She also said Social Security and other federal agencies believe the younger Frank is dead, and are withholding disability payments. The family is working to restore them. Meanwhile, Meikle said she is thrilled Frank — who has returned to living on the street, declining offers of shelter — is alive. “We lived through our worst fear,” she said, adding that her brother does not grasp the magnitude of the incident. “He was dead on the sidewalk. We buried him. Those feelings don’t go away.”
– Eleven days after laying his son to rest, Frank Kerrigan got a call from a friend, the AP reports. "Your son is alive," he said. According to the Orange County Register, Orange County coroner's officials in California had misidentified the body. The mix-up began on May 6 when a man was found dead behind a Verizon store. Kerrigan, 82, said he called the coroner's office and was told the body was that of his 57-year-old son, also named Frank Kerrigan, who is mentally ill and had been living on the street. When he asked whether he should identify the body, a woman said—apparently incorrectly—that identification had been made through fingerprints. "When somebody tells me my son is dead, when they have fingerprints, I believe them," Kerrigan said. On May 12, the family held a $20,000 funeral that drew about 50 people, and the body was buried 150 feet from where Kerrigan's wife is buried. "Someone else had a beautiful sendoff," one family member said. "It's horrific." Then came the May 23 phone call from a friend; Kerrigan's son was standing on his patio. It's unclear how coroner's officials misidentified the body. An attorney for the family said the coroner's office apparently used an old driver's license photo when identifying the body as the younger Frank Kerrigan. The family plans to sue.