Mannequin Down! Local Display Triggers False Alarm

Drive past a certain Wayland chiropractor's office at Halloween and you're likely to find a witch being toted into the office by a couple of firefighters. At Christmas, you could find Santa Claus bent over with obvious back pain from toting that heavy sack of toys.

Right now, you'll find what appears to be a dog-tired runner who has fallen down just short of the finish line.

That Boston Marathon-themed display at proved so convincing that a passing motorist caught a glimpse and then reported an emergency to dispatchers at the Public Safety Building across the street.

Wayland Fire Capt. Bob Dorey said they received the alarm about a "man down on Pelham Island Extension" at about 9 p.m. on April 3.

"If someone says someone’s in trouble, we start our response," Dorey said.

The ambulance crew arrived first on the scene and "determined very quickly that the man down was, in fact, a mannequin," Dorey said.

Dorey said the crews were good-natured about the false alarm, a reaction Cooper was glad to hear.

The mannequin mastermind, Cooper himself, said the displays began with a Halloween 2010 display featuring a Dr. Frankenstein-type chiropractor adjusting a patient with a pumpkin head.

That got a lot of people talking and generated letters from people telling Cooper how much they enjoyed the displays.

"We just kind of kept going with them,” he said.

Cooper, who lives in Wayland, said many of the ideas for the displays come from his 3-year-old son. The 2011 Halloween display featuring firefighters is an example -- Cooper's son dressed up as a firefighter himself last Halloween.

“My whole family does it with me,” he said, explaining that he constructs the wooden frames for the mannequins and each one takes a few weekends to put together.

Cooper said the displays have become a landmark he uses to help clients find his office.

“I get people looking,” he said. “People may not know me, but most people know there’s a chiropractor here.”