Corn Maze 911 Rescue Begs Question: Are They Safe?
By Christy Strawser
CBS Detroit Managing Editor
A Massachusetts couple frantically dialed 911 this week when they got lost in a corn maze with their 3-week-old baby and couldn't find their way out. They had to be rescued by police officers with scent-sniffing dogs.
So much for a family fun day.
"I don't know what made us do this," the woman told police during a seven-minute 911 call, according to the Los Angeles Times. "It was daytime when we came in, we thought if we came in someone would come in and find us... We can hear [the police officers]... Oh, my goodness. The mosquitoes are eating us alive, and I never took my daughter out, this is the first time. Never again.
"This is embarrassing."
With Michigan's dozens of corn mazes in full bloom, it begs the questions -- Could it happen here?
Staffers say it could not happen at one of the region's most popular mazes, Farmer Charley's Corn Maze in Monroe, which has several mazes in varying degrees of difficulty. The largest is full of twists and turns on 10 acres of farmland cut in a pattern that honors the Detroit Tigers and Toledo Mud Hens.
"You're never going to have to dial 911 here," said Yvonne Curham, a staffer at Farmer Charley's.
Curham said Farmer Charley's keeps it safe with "corn cops" who wander through the 10-foot-tall mazes continually to make sure everyone's OK. Another employees sits in a crows' nest 30 feet high to keep an eye on the customers.
Children are banned from the largest, most difficult maze. The 10,000 or so corn maze visitors a year are counted when they go in, and Curham said employees would never leave until everyone who went in had also gone out.
That's reportedly what happened in Massachusetts, staff closed up and went home while the couple and their baby were still wandering. They couldn't find their way out, got disoriented, and dialed 911.
"We've not lost anyone yet," said Holly Glomski, farm manager of the Charles L. Bowers School Farm in Bloomfield Hills, laughing. "It's funny, I read that they were only 25 feet from the exit."
Glomski said her farm also has corn cops who make sure no one is left in the maze before they shut down for the night.
"We make sure no one is 'corn'fused,'" Glomski said.
Kamille Combs, marketing director for the Utah-based company that designed the maze in Massachusetts, told the LA Times she had never heard of a corn maze police rescue before.
And if Farmer Charley's has anything to say about it, it won't happen again.
"I would think that they probably didn't stay on the path and they went into the corn, that's what you're not supposed to do," Curham said.
