Dispatchers Honored Nationally this Week

Maura Maschinski was a little apprehensive when a woman in line with her at the grocery story asked if she worked for the Elgin Police Department.

After reluctantly revealing her profession as a 911 telecommunicator, the woman told Maschinski that her alcoholic father had committed suicide a couple of weeks before.

Instantly, Maschinski remembered taking the call from the man's wife, who found him after he shot himself.

"She noticed my name on my check when I handed it to the cashier," Maschinski said of the woman's daughter. "And she said, 'I just wanted you to know that my mother could never thank you enough.'"

And even though that encounter took place about 10 years ago and Maschinski has fielded thousands of calls since, that moment of gratitude remains fresh in her mind.

This week, police departments nationwide are taking time to thank emergency call takers and dispatchers like Maschinski as part of National Public Safety Telecommunicator's Week.

More than 250 million calls pour into 911 centers across the country each year, said Courtney McCarron, spokeswoman for the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials.

"The call takers and dispatchers are one of the most overlooked first responders," McCarron said. "This gives them a week where they are put into the limelight and the public is reminded that they don't just call 911 and it's seamless and magic. There are people behind the scenes that make it happen."

But the stress can be overwhelming and the average length of an emergency call taker's career only is about two years, said T.G. Mieure of Waukegan, treasurer for the Illinois APCO chapter who helped initiate Congress' 1991 proclamation of the national observation week.

"You may take a call about someone complaining about a barking dog and then the next minute you're talking to someone having a heart attack," said Mieure, now the communications supervisor for the Mundelein Police Department.

Along with answering phones, call takers and dispatchers also give medical assistance, direct police and fire personnel to a scene, as well as negotiate domestic battery, suicide and hostage situations, said Henry Gralak, director of Elgin's Emergency Communications.

Call takers also must listen to much more than their callers.

Such was the case recently when an Elgin emergency call taker noticed an elderly woman kept asking him to repeat himself, so he told her to go to the door knowing she likely wouldn't hear the doorbell when paramedics arrived, Gralak said.

"People don't call us when they feel good," he said. "They call us when things are at their absolute worst."

One of the most stressful calls Maschinski handled involved a man who barricaded himself in his home.

She persuaded him to walk out of the house unarmed and told him how to approach police officers - who had surrounded the house - without getting hurt.

"I had to get up and leave the room after that one," she said.

She also remained on the phone with police officers as they were being shot at by suspected gang members about five years ago.

But when she found herself in need of 911, her quick-thinking instincts disappeared.

"I remember standing there shaking with the phone in my hand," she said of the day her husband fell off the roof and began bleeding from his eyes and ears. "I've delivered babies, told people how to do CPR, but when it was a personal situation, I just froze."

Maschinski's neighbors called for help and for the next three months she never cooked because police, fire and other emergency personnel always brought her food to show their appreciation for all that she does for them.

"I make a positive impact in someone's life every time I walk in this door," she said. "Whether it's because we know where someone's lost dog is, or it's a true life-saving situation every day.

"You will not get a more rewarding job, even though you may be called anything but a daughter of God every day."