For Telecommunicators, No One Calls to Chat
Teresa Griffitts never knows who will be calling when she begins her 12-hour shift as a dispatcher for the Corona (Calif.) Police Department.
What she does know is the callers won’t be sharing cookies recipes or jokes. Nope, these are not happy calls.
“We don’t talk to people who are having a good day,” Griffitts says.
The calls range from the frivolous to the potentially fatal. Many are reports of domestic violence, usually from women but sometimes from men “who don’t want to get in trouble,” she explains. “The most difficult are those involving children and the elderly.”
One of those children is Noah Anumudu. On Oct. 13, Noah, who is 6, called 9-1-1. His mother had fallen and was unconscious. Though she was breathing, Noah could not wake her up.
Griffitts, 53, who has been a dispatcher since 1980, took the call.
“I used a calm demeanor, and spoke to him as I would to any 6-year-old, reassuring him.”
At the same time, she dispatched police and fire units and an ambulance. She had Noah unlock the front door and told him who would be responding. And more than once she had him check on his mother to make sure she was still breathing.
Multi-tasking, in fact, is the most crucial skill for a dispatcher, Griffitts says.
“And you have to remain calm when others don’t, and think very quickly under stress.”
Those skills contributed to a happy ending for Noah and his mother. Not only did his mom recover, but Noah and Griffitts were honored last month by the California Chapter of the National Emergency Number Association at its annual Kids Heroes Awards in San Diego.
The communications center where Griffitts works looks a little like NASA headquarters, with four computer screens at each station for the 19 full-time and five part-time dispatchers. While employed by the Corona Police Department, they are not sworn officers. At any given time, three to eight dispatchers are fielding calls.
And there are lots of calls. Hope Young, communications supervisor/emergency medical dispatch program supervisor, said more than 113,000 police, fire and medical aid calls were received in 2013. And more than 31,000 of those were 9-1-1 calls, many of which were really not emergencies.
“We do get bogus calls,” Griffitts says. “Some are repeat callers and we get to know them. Still, we can’t take a chance; we still have to respond.”
Over time, dispatchers develop “a sixth sense. I hear background noise that makes me suspicious, so we have a special code for officers to be careful.”
Griffitts joined the department in 1992 after serving as a dispatcher for cities in the South Bay area. She was attracted to public service by her father, a battalion chief for the Redondo Beach Fire Department. She has a son, Gary, a Corona police officer who recently was promoted to corporal. A daughter, Jamie Avila, teaches at Centennial High School.
While she tries to remain dispassionate in doing her job, Griffitts admits some calls “get to me.” She recalls a woman calling from a cell phone, holding her baby and screaming about a fire. She finally gave an address but not an apartment number. (Calls from a cell phone cannot be traced for an address.
I asked Griffitts how it turned out.
“That’s the hard part. We don’t get closure.”
There are new calls to take, and no time to look back.