911 dispatchers occasionally make the news for errors that they make in fielding calls from panicked or even hysterical callers. In a job where time is always a significant consideration and stress levels can often be overwhelming, many dispatchers say that it is easy to make mistakes that can be chalked up to simple human error. The problem is that those mistakes can literally cost people their lives. So when a 911 dispatcher performs well under such extreme conditions, it is always worth recognizing and that is exactly what happened recently in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Officials at the Scottsdale Police Department reported that three people who called their 911 line recently owe their lives to the dispatchers who fielded the call. That call came in just after 5am on Wednesday, July 30 from a male who was reporting that his female companion may have overdosed on drugs. The caller claimed he did not know what drug or drugs the victim took and didn’t know the address where he and the victim were located. Dispatchers asked the man for the address several times during the call, which lasted about five minutes, but they never got it from him.
The caller informed dispatchers that the woman had passed out and asked them what he could do to revive her. He eventually was able to give the name of the apartment complex and the intersection where it was located before he lost consciousness.
911 dispatcher, Rosa Chavez, was able to triangulate the caller’s cell phone location and communicate that information to specialists who managed to locate the exact apartment. Police arrived at the location and found three people who had overdosed, not just one, and who were all on the verge of death. First responders rushed two of the victims to a local hospital while the third refused to go. All three escaped the incident with their lives.