CUBA, Mo. – The Ferguson family in Cuba, Missouri, recently got a dreaded knock at the door from sheriff’s deputies with news that a relative was killed in a car crash.

It happened after a hit-and-run crash on Route 3 near Interstate 55 in St. Clair County.

“…Sheriff’s deputies at our door at 5:17 a.m. (on) May 22, telling us that our daughter was dead,” Mae Ferguson said. “They sent that body out of SLU Hospital to the city medical examiner’s office with a toe tag reading Danika Ferguson.”

For the next 10 hours, Mae and Charlie Ferguson said they arranged for organ donation, made funeral plans, and told their grandkids, who they were watching because their daughter was relocating to Steeleville.

Meanwhile, another family distantly related to the Fergusons began wondering if it was their loved one who died. Cynthia Mobley uncovered the tragic truth, which she learned through a conversation with a medical examiner over a tattoo.

“I told the city morgue that they have an identity problem,” Mobley said.

That led to the Ferguson family’s frantic search for their out-of-town daughter.

Danika Ferguson, meanwhile, was very much alive. A family friend found Danika asleep in her new apartment – her phone battery had run out of juice.

“They said, ‘Your mother thinks you are dead! This county thinks you’re dead! Call your mom!” she said.

“I will never forget the feeling that my daughter was dead,” Mae said. “And the thing is, we have a happy ending!”

Saint Louis University Hospital declined to comment, but the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office wrote a long letter to FOX 2 offering its apology to the family, even though it wasn’t the sheriff’s mistake.

The letter added that Sheriff Darin Layman has, “…directed all death notifications to be forwarded directly to him,” and that, “All requests for a death notification outside our county will now require a written message.”

But Mae believes the sheriff has nothing to apologize for, adding that a hospital chaplain gave her an explanation for the mistake.

“What he told me is the other (surviving) crash victim had said, ‘Where’s Danika?’ and from his records, they assumed it was Danika (who had died in the crash).”

They are distant relatives, but now closer through tragedy.

“I know what I live with,” Mae said. I can’t imagine what they live with every day.

“Every single morning, I wake up and I think my daughter’s gone and then it kicks in that, ‘No, wait, she’s ok; I have her still.’ She’s my baby. She always will be.”