A funeral home in Hayward allegedly cremated the remains of a girl against the wishes of her parents before mistakenly sending her ashes to the wrong family and covering up the series of errors, according to a recently filed lawsuit.
The full extent of the alleged blunder became known to the Bay Area family months after they thought they buried their daughter — and only after the mother made a post on TikTok about the situation that went viral, prompting a former funeral home employee and the family who mistakenly received the remains to share more details.
Alameda County residents Denisse Chavez and Adrian Corona sued Holy Sepulchre Cemetery and Funeral Center, the Diocese of Oakland and Irvington Memorial Cemetery for negligence and breach of contract over the alleged mishandling of the remains of their daughter, Alaina Corona, who died in November.
“This is every grieving parent’s nightmare and it was entirely preventable,” Domenic Martini, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
The complaint was filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court. Holy Sepulchre and the Oakland Diocese did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment on the allegations.
“Obviously this is a very unfortunate situation,” said Jamison Bobo, the manager at Irvington Memorial, in a statement to the Chronicle. “However, Irvington Memorial disputes that it has any liability in this matter and intends to vigorously defend any claims against it.”
Late last year, Chavez and Corona hired Holy Sepulchre, a branch of the Catholic Funeral and Cemetery Services, for the funeral and burial of their daughter, Alaina. The parents said in the lawsuit they informed the funeral home and diocese that they did not want her remains to be cremated. The lawsuit did not detail how Alaina died. Chavez and Corona were not available to comment Friday.
But Holy Sepulchre mistakenly sent Alaina’s remains to Irvington Memorial in Fremont under the name of a different person whose cremation had been authorized, according to the complaint.
Irvington Memorial allegedly cremated Alaina’s body without seeking additional confirmation beyond the attached paperwork, the lawsuit said, and then labeled the ashes under the wrong name.
Holy Sepulchre placed the mislabeled ashes into an urn purchased for the other decedent and gave them to the wrong family in early December, the complaint said. Employees did not realize the mistake until five days later, when they could not find Alaina’s body in the refrigeration area of the funeral home, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit alleges that Holy Sepulchre then “took multiple fraudulent steps to cover up these mistakes.”
The funeral home told Chavez and Corona that it had accidentally cremated their daughter, but failed to tell them that it had given her ashes to the wrong family, the complaint said. Instead, Holy Sepulchre went through with the Dec. 12 funeral, allowing Chavez and Corona to “bury what they believed to be their daughter’s ashes,” according to the complaint. It was not clear from the complaint whose ashes, if any, were buried that day.
“To this day,” the lawsuit said, the parents “have no idea whether they buried their daughter or not.”
The day after the funeral, the family who had mistakenly received Alaina’s ashes returned them to Holy Sepulchre, which exchanged them for the correct ashes, the complaint said.
After the funeral for Alaina, Chavez posted a TikTok video about how her daughter was “accidentally cremated,” which went viral, accumulating more than 300,000 likes. The video shows her crying at the cemetery, noting that her “heart shattered even more” when the funeral home called to inform her of the cremation.
“Some days I feel like I’m dreaming and can’t wake up, my heart feels like I’ve been stabbed and there’s days where I don’t feel alive, but to be honest God has been with me,” Chavez wrote in the caption. “I know Alaina my daughter is always watching me and protecting me. Getting that phone call will always be stuck in my head. I don’t understand why … how was that (an) ‘accident.’”
After Chavez posted the video, a former Holy Sepulchre employee messaged her to inform her that the funeral home gave Alaina’s ashes to the wrong family for about a week, according to the complaint. The mother who mistakenly received Alaina’s ashes also contacted Chavez after seeing the video, according to the complaint, sharing the same information.
A spokesperson for the law firm representing the plaintiffs said the family “does not know what happened to the ashes.”
The parents are seeking a jury trial and damages in connection with “serious emotional distress,” which the lawsuit said they have suffered as a result of the alleged mistakes by the funeral and cemetery service providers.
“This is not just negligence, it’s a profound violation of trust, dignity, and basic human decency,” said Martini, the attorney. “Families turn to these institutions in their darkest hour. What happened here is indefensible.”
