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Dispatcher: Answering your call - Answering Your Call |
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Written by Erin Frustaci
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Thursday, 01 February 2007 |
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Page 1 of 4
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Heidi Muller| for NEXTnc
Communications supervisor Annie LaFleur takes a call during a recent night at the Weld County Regional Communications Center in Greeley. LaFleur says working at the dispatch center is one of the hardest, and also most rewarding, jobs out there.
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“911, what’s your emergency?” a voice says through the phone. A distressed boy explains that his sister is lost.
A series of questions follow: What city are you in? What’s your phone number? What’s your name? How old is your sister? Could you repeat your address? How long has she been missing? What’s your sister’s name? What was she wearing?
After the boy answers each question, the dispatcher tells him an officer will contact him as soon as possible. They hang up. Minutes later, the phone rings again.
If people like Annie LaFleur were not there to pick it up, who knows what would happen.
Still, it isn’t always easy.
“This job is not a happy-go-lucky job,” LaFleur said. “When you have people call in, they’re not happy or laughing. It’s not an ice cream store. You see people at their worst, when they are upset, crying and scared. It’s a very difficult job to do, but this is the place people call when they need help.”
Annie LaFleur, 36, is a communications supervisor at the Weld County Regional Communications Center in Greeley. She started as a dispatcher in December 2002.
With a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, another bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in engineering, she certainly has plenty of other career options.
“I wanted to look for something more meaningful to me,” she said.
After being laid off from her previous job as a water resource engineer, she decided it was worth the significant pay reduction to shift careers.
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DETACHMENT
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Heidi Muller | for NEXTnc
Annie LaFleur, right, speaks with a 911 caller during a recent shift at the Weld County Regional Communications Center in Greeley. She enters information about the call into the county’s computer system, below, and
dispatches the proper authorities.
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LaFleur said one of the hardest things for a dispatcher to learn is how to detach themselves.
She thinks back to when she first started working as a dispatcher, to one call that sticks out in her mind. It was from a lady on her cell phone.
Her teenage son had jumped into the river to cool off while in Big Thompson Canyon. He never came back up and the woman had no clue where in the canyon they were.
“I could hear people in the background screaming, and she was screaming,” LaFleur said. “She was trying to find out where they were, meanwhile someone was drowning in the river, and I couldn’t do anything about it.”
Sometimes, calls from cell phones do not always get routed to the area the person is calling from. In this instance, all LaFleur could do was give the case to Boulder and hope for the best. Unfortunately, the boy didn’t survive.
“That was a struggle to handle,” she said. “Shortly after that, my boyfriend, who is now my husband, gave me advice that sticks with me to this day.”
He told her to remember these emergencies are not her emergencies.
HANDLING STRESS
 Good stress relieving techniques are also key.
LaFleur has her black belt in karate and has become a tennis junkie. She also loves going to the gym.
On really stressful days, LaFleur is thankful for her one-hour commute to her home in Northglenn.
“It’s my processing time,” she said. “That’s my decompressing time, where I run through things I can do better; and when I am home, I’m done. I use that hour to download.”
FEW RESOLUTIONS
Because of the high volume of calls, dispatchers often don’t get to hear how the calls they take get resolved. Once they transfer a call and get busy with the next call, they can forget.
“We equate it to reading a lot of books without ever finishing them,” LaFleur said. “We start reading a book, put it down and never get to the ending.”
Sgt. Dave Mathis, with the Weld County Regional Communications Center, said the staff functions as a support system for each other. The job also calls for an extensive amount of training that takes about 10 months to complete.
Staff at the communications center is responsible for answering and distributing calls for 43 emergency police, fire and medical service agencies throughout the county.
As part of LaFleur’s recent promotion, she took over the hiring and recruitment process.
“Annie has a high level of energy and enthusiasm,” Mathis said. “Her people enjoy the job and stick around.”
STICKING POWER
Currently, the Weld County Regional Communications Center has 35 full-time dispatchers, two part-time dispatchers and 7 supervisors.
“We are down 10 people right now, which means a lot of overtime,” Mathis said.
The Poudre Emergency Communications Center in Larimer County is also not fully staffed.
“In the industry it is fairly common,” Karen Carlson, communications manager said. “Given the stress of the job, very few centers are fully staffed.”
Carlson says it takes a certain kind of person to stick with the job.
“You have to be able to stay calm when things go totally bananas,” she said.
LaFleur recognizes the fact that most people will only call 911 once or twice in their lives, so they don’t necessarily understand how it works. At the end of the day, she has the satisfaction of knowing she is helping others.
“I like working as a dispatcher,” LaFleur said. “It’s like being an unsung hero. People don’t know what all goes into it.”
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