Santa Ana: Eleven days after laying his son to rest, Frank J. Kerrigan got a call from a friend.
"Your son is alive," he said.
"Put my son on the phone," Kerrigan said. "[My son] said, 'Hi Dad.' "
Orange County coroner's officials had misidentified the body, the Orange County Register reported on Friday.
The mix-up began on May 6 when a man was found dead behind a Verizon store in Fountain Valley.
Kerrigan, 82, of Wildomar, California, said he called the coroner's office and was told the body was that of his son, Frank M. Kerrigan, 57, 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.
On May 12, the family held a $US20,000 ($26,000) funeral that drew about 50 people from as far away as Las Vegas and Washington state.
Frank jnr's brother, John Kerrigan, gave the eulogy.
"We thought we were burying our brother," Frank jnr's sister, Carole Meikle, 56, said.
"Someone else had a beautiful send-off. It's horrific."
The body was interred at a cemetery in Orange about 50 metres from where Kerrigan's wife is buried.
Earlier, in the funeral home, the grieving Kerrigan snr had looked at the man in the casket and touched his hair, convinced in his grief that he was looking at his son for the last time.
"I didn't know what my dead son was going to look like," he said.
Then came the May 23 phone call.
It is unclear how coroner's officials misidentified the body.
The Orange County Sheriff's Department said it was conducting an internal investigation into the mix-up and that all identification policies and procedures would be reviewed to ensure no misidentifications occurred in the future.
Kerrigan jnr has refused offers of shelter and is living on the street.
Authorities are still investigating who is buried in the plot.
AP