Juneau's Lifeline

"Nine-eleven. What's your emergency?"

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Juneau dispatch operator Jennie Vinson speaks calmly with a woman on the phone. The caller is describing problems with a companion who's acting awkward and unresponsive.

"Is he conscious?" Vinson asks. "How old is he? 70? Male? But he's not responding normally?"

As Vinson talks, another operator, Celeste Lopez, is at her station listening to the call, her fingers flying over her keyboard. It takes less than a minute from first response to dispatch of an ambulance.

Each year, Juneau's emergency dispatch center answers tens of thousands of calls - 43,000 last year.

All the calls are serious to someone, and all are important to the operators. To outsiders, however, some may sound more important than others.

One call came from a man who wanted the fire department to get his exotic bird out of a tree. One came from a couple frantically trying to save their baby from suffocating.

Lopez has worked at the center for more than six years, and she loves her job.

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"I like the excitement, and I love all the different things we get to do. Every day is different," she said.

Working with three computer terminals on the second floor of police headquarters, operators shuffle their attention among as many as 13 police officers. The operators make inquiries to the national criminal database, dispatch medical and fire calls from five fire stations, call out for medical airlifts, answer 911 calls and answer citizen and media phone calls.

They're expected to be pleasant and calm. A mistake could cost a life.

One word heard again and again at the call center is "multitasking."

"It's extremely important," operator Christy Smith said. "It's a requirement. If you don't multitask, you might miss an important piece of information and you have the potential to put an officer's life at risk."

Juneau police Sgt. Steve Christensen, a 21-year veteran of the force, said good dispatch operators are priceless; Juneau's, he said, are top-notch.

"Dispatch is very important. They're basically our lifeline, and they're the community's lifeline," he said. "If we need help, they're the first ones we call."

Vinson, who has been on the job for six months, said she applied to work at the dispatch center because it sounded like fun.

"It's definitely not a boring job," she said.

Vinson's father was a career police officer with the Juneau department, and she recalls his response when she told him about her new job.

"He said something along the lines of, 'Good luck!'" she said with a laugh.

For Smith, working at dispatch was a homecoming of sorts. Her mother worked there.

"I remember when my mom did it, we would open our Christmas presents in the comm center, then our father would drive us home."

Every day, the center handles 70 to 120 calls. Last winter, it took 9,200 calls, 2,000 of them 911 calls.

The rest were officers reporting traffic stops and citizens either asking questions about the community, reporting non-emergency crimes or noting safety concerns.

The job does have its drawbacks. The center is perpetually short-staffed, and 12-hour shifts make for long days. Pay starts at a little more than $25 an hour.

Then there are the bad calls. Calls where a woman is getting beaten, "And she's saying, 'He's pointing a gun at me,'" Lopez said.

"And you're stuck there thinking, 'Am I going to ask all the right questions to keep someone safe?'"

On one call, a couple called frantically about their baby. It had stopped breathing and Lopez led the father through the steps of CPR. The infant died despite their efforts.

"Just listening to the mother in the background screaming ... ," Lopez said. "Your stomach kind of drops."

• Will Morris can be reached at william.morris@juneauempire.com