Merrick shop stars in hidden camera show

A hidden-camera "sting" show phones your Merrick store to ask if it might bring in a crew of 30, a big electrical generator, a bevy of cameras and microphones and host John Quiñones, and use your customers as unknowing participants.

What would you do?

If you're Renee Arje, co-owner with husband Harry of the children's and juniors' active-wear / camp-supply store Inmotion on Merrick Road, you say, "Bring it on, ABC News."

"It was very exciting," Arje recalls of the January shoot for "What Would You Do?" which uses actors to stage ethical dilemmas in public places to see if and how bystanders intervene. In the two segments from Arje's store that run tomorrow at 9 p.m. on WABC/7, customers witness a mother showing such extreme favoritism toward one of her two children that it drives the other to tears. (Two previous segments shot there aired Feb. 18.)

The producers, Arje explains, "escalate it to where have to get involved or else see a child crying.

"Normally," she says, "if it were happening in our store, we wouldn't let it escalate to that point. We saw teenagers get involved, other mothers, grandparents, every age group." The child actors, she says, "were amazing. Tears on cue. You could not even believe it."

Speaking of child actors, Merrick resident Dina Lohan says she used to bring her own model-actor kids to the store. "I love that place," Lohan told Newsday. "I used to go there all the time, but Cody is bigger now. They're really sweet, the owners. They should carry bigger sizes so I can buy stuff."