Answering the call
Dispatchers conquer job stress to carry out duties
Nicole Tavenner
Dispatchers Shelly Wheeler-Burland, left, Devin Wegener and Keith Deetz work a shift in the Lake County Dispatch office.
Nicole Tavenner
Shelly Wheeler-Burland sits at her dispatch desk surrounded by computer screens.
Nicole Tavenner
A Lake County dispatcher points out county lines and areas covered by dispatch.
Nicole Tavenner
An award won by dispatcher Staycha Hansen stands in a place of honor in the Lake County dispatch center.
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Berl Tiskus
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
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POLSON — For such a busy place, Lake County Dispatch is deceptively calm and quiet. Two dispatchers with headsets are seated before two horseshoe-shaped desks placed back to back. They are in a 28 by 20-foot room with pale walls, industrial carpeting and two east windows that offer a glimpse of sky, trees and grass.
Subdued lighting reveals a bank of many computer screens in front of each dispatcher, blinking lights, cameras scanning the jail and courthouse, several telephones, a row of brightly colored panic buttons and a muted TV set in the corner.
Even the phones ring quietly, but the dispatchers hear them and respond, while deftly answering radio calls from police officers and sheriff’s deputies.
A buzz of energy thrums underneath the calm, quiet environment, as all emergency and criminal calls are routed through this office. As of Oct. 10, Lake County Dispatch has received 24,321 calls in 2014.
The computer screens call up the Criminal Justice Information Network, maps of the county, GPS coordinates of officers, dispatcher emails and other routine items, like pager checks or radio calls from officers reporting mileage at the end of their shifts.
The Job
Dispatchers work a 12-hour shift, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. or 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., with two people on the day shift and three staffing the night shift.
“You have to work any schedule when you work here,” dispatcher Christine Trogden said. “You cannot come in here and say, ‘I can’t work tonight because I couldn’t find a babysitter.’ You have to have daycare for your kids.”
Dispatchers bid shifts based on seniority.
“When you are new, the best place for you is a night shift,” Baltz said. “If you can handle a night shift, you can handle a day shift.”
The staff of 12 dispatchers and one supervisor cover all of Lake County. Though it’s slightly over the county line, the office also dispatches Mission Ambulance to the town of Dixon.
Prior to starting the job, dispatchers receive 14 weeks of training, including a week at the Montana Law Enforcement Academy.
The Montana Highway Patrol and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes each have their own dispatch center but interact frequently with Lake County Dispatch.
The number of calls fluctuates.
“Some night we’ll have five calls all night or get 100,” dispatcher Katrina Baltz said.
Every 911 call and every incident – including traffic stops - generates a case report. Case reports are documents that include names, addresses and as much information as possible.
All dispatchers agree summer is the busiest season although around Christmas, Thanksgiving and the New Year, the number of calls increases too. This includes domestic situations and suicide attempts.
In addition to responding to calls and contacting first responders, dispatchers handle information calls from people with fire permits who leave their address and what they’re burning so as to avoid unnecessary fire calls. Dispatchers also enter orders of protection, warrants, stolen items, stolen vehicles, stolen weapons, stolen license plates, missing persons and runaways into the Criminal Justice Information Network so law enforcement is made aware of these details.
In addition to their regular duties, dispatchers have various other tasks to do. Off and on through the workday, dispatchers may be asked to run criminal histories and driver histories for the district and justice courts and the Lake County Attorney’s office.
Occasionally the jail may call and ask women dispatchers to pat down female prisoners.
One dispatcher regularly checks pawn slip lists from local pawnshops listing who pawned what.
Dispatcher Staycha Hansen works entering warrants, and received a 100 percent award on a Federal Bureau of Investigation audit.
There’s also the “cow book,” which deals with livestock issues, such as stolen horses and cows.
Cell phone use has increased the number of traffic violations that are called in to dispatch.
Before cell phones, a person had to pull over and find a pay phone to contact dispatch. Now phones are much more accessible.
The People
The volume of work is daunting, and not just anyone can be a dispatcher.
Darlene Lester, who’s worked as a dispatcher for 20 years, and been a supervisor for three, characterized dispatchers as multi-taskers.
“Dispatchers have to be intelligent but also be street wise. You get cussed at, called this and that, people ask why the h—- aren’t the cops here yet, and you still have to help that person,” Lester said. “You need to have a thick skin.”
Coworker Trogden agrees that dispatchers have to be able to do many things at once.
“If you think you can multi-task, wait until you have worked in dispatch,” Trogden said.
It helps to be detail-oriented, she added. Dispatchers need to listen to two different things at the same time and get all the details.
Dispatcher Chanona Grieff agreed, adding, “You develop a radio ear.”
Lake County dispatchers agree that people in their office and in law enforcement often have “type A” personalities. Type As being those on the personality continuum who tend to be driven, impatient, a perfectionist, competitive and achievement oriented.
Anna Wright has worked as a dispatcher for 22 years, 15 at Lake County.
A self-described “adrenaline junkie,” Wright said she enjoys helping people. She quickly added that dispatching is not a job for everybody.
The learning curve for dispatchers is steep.
She remembered feeling after her first day of training that she just didn’t know if she could do it.
“(But) it gets easier,” she said.
“You don’t feel good about the job in training,” Grieff added.
Especially about cardio pulmonary resuscitation calls, Trogden explained. People need to continue CPR until help arrives, and it’s physically hard to do. Dispatchers need to be part cheerleader and part drill sergeant to keep the CPR going. A person bleeding profusely also upsets people on the scene, and dispatchers need to keep them calm, Trogden said.
“A CPR call will make you or break you (as a dispatcher,)” Wright added.
Though it’s tough getting used to working at night, Baltz, Grieff and Trogden prefer the night shift. All three dispatchers have families with young children.
Common calls for the night shift are people hitting deer, traffic complaints and cows on the road.
The Human Factor
Hearing the panic and fear in people’s voices when they call in to report emergencies is distressing. Dispatchers individually deal with this stress in various ways.
Wright said she vents out loud to co-workers or an empty room. She also talks to the policemen and deputies who responded to an incident.
“They are a good sounding board,” she said.
She’ll also call her daughter after work to talk to the grandkids.
Lester uses needlework to deal with the stress. She knits, needle felts and is learning to spin, “anything that has to do with wool.”
She’s also really good at “pushing it away and moving on.”
Trogden explains that when a night shift worker has a difficult call, they’ll try to take a break, maybe a walk around the block, to pull themselves together before the next call.
At the same time though, they do like their jobs.
Trogden and Baltz received an award from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council for a call they worked on. The award helped to inspire them.
“The award brought us back up,” Baltz said. “It helps to feel good about yourself.”
Lake County has an area of about 1,654 square miles, and the dispatchers all live here.
Some grew up here. So a call may come in that concerns a close friend or a family member.
“I was here almost a year,” Baltz said, “when my mom called in about my dad when he passed away. I took the call. That was almost my breaking point.”
Some calls really cause dispatchers to react emotionally.
Lester cried when she recalled a call involving a little boy with bruises all over him.
Trogden explained that some calls really affect her. She said, “My blood pressure goes up. I’m thinking, ‘God, it’s taking forever to get there.’”
Baltz said, “It’s like you are holding those people’s hands and sitting in their living room. You try to stay calm for them, but you do react.”
Officers, dispatchers, other first responders are “just like family,” Baltz said. “They really care for you.”
For instance, the night Baltz’s dad died, a Polson officer gave her a ride out to her folks’ place, she said.
Working at dispatch can however, desensitize a person.
“It makes you cynical,” Trogden said, because dispatchers deal with crime and criminals.
“I think it makes you judgmental,” Baltz said.
She notices people tweaking, when she may not have if she wasn’t a dispatcher.
Hansen said she tries to get the stress out right away, “get it done and said.”
She tells herself, “The emergency has happened, and I’m just here to assist.”
When she goes home after a shift, she says she sits in her car for about five minutes to decompress, then she goes in and hugs her kids.
First responders weigh in
“Dispatchers now have to be impromptu medics, therapists and criminal investigators,” Lake County Undersheriff Dan Yonkin said. “They no longer just focus on fire calls and officer calls.”
In Yonkin’s time at the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, dispatch has evolved from one person behind the radio answering officer calls, to a full on 911 Center.
“The ladies and gentlemen who sit in those seats for 12 hours have a job like no other,” he said. “They are there for every car crash, drug overdose, suicide, homicide and fire.”
And it’s stressful. After sending first responders to a scene with the best information they can glean, dispatchers have to sit back, listen and hope help arrives in time.
“This is life and death,” Yonkin said. “We don’t get do-overs.”
Tim Brester, who owns both Polson Ambulance Inc. and Ronan Ambulance Service, said, “We’d be lost without dispatch. When somebody calls 911, they dispatch us, help find the place and keep us safe… Safety is a big one, too. You get called for abdominal pain. That could be caused by a knife.”
Dispatchers ask questions about the abdominal pain — when it started, if it’s an injury, if the person was in a fight or a car wreck, how long the pain has been going on, who else is on the scene, what they are wearing — so they can keep ambulance crews and other first responders safe.
Sometimes this annoys the 911 caller. They don’t understand that it’s important for first responders — law enforcement, ambulances, EMTs, fire department — to have as much information as possible.
If five people are at the scene and the dispatcher asks what they are wearing or driving or if they’re armed, it’s because responders need this vital information.
“Dispatchers don’t get enough credit — a small office, long hours, dealing with some really bad calls,” Brester said.
He added that dispatch knows when an ambulance is paged, when it leaves the garage, when it arrives on scene, when and what hospital it goes to and when it leaves the hospital.
He commends dispatchers for the work they do and how they conduct themselves.
“They’re awesome to work with,” he said.
Karen Sargeant, public information officer for Polson Fire Department and Lake County Sheriff’s Office, agrees wholeheartedly with Brester’s assessment.
“Dispatch is at the center of the wheel,” she said. “They send emergency medical services, fire and law enforcement where they need to go. They are the ones who get the fire department extra resources or mutual aid, if we need them… I have nothing but praise for them.”
Steve Stanley, with the Office of Emergency Management, has seen dispatch’s workload grow over the years.
“In my lifetime around Lake County Dispatch, I’ve watched it go from one radio to 13 radios and almost 40,000 calls per year,” he said. “It’s daunting… and dispatch does a great job. They set the tone for absolutely every incident.”
The Future
There’s talk of change that would have Lake County Dispatch become its own entity, instead of being under the Lake County Sheriff Office’s umbrella.
Advantages to this change would be that the three incorporated cities dispatch serves — Polson, Ronan and St. Ignatius — could pay fees directly to dispatch.
An E911 committee would deal with the dispatch supervisor and the Lake County Commissioners. The committee would include law enforcement, fire department, ambulance and emergency management members.
“It would give all the agencies a seat at the table,” Stanley said.
In this proposed scenario, the county commissioners would carve out money from the LCSO to fund a stand-alone dispatch.
Regardless of whether new technology is implemented, or if dispatch becomes it’s own office, a group of dedicated dispatchers - calm and capable in crisis – remain ready to take on emergencies, one call at a time.
