NAMPA, Idaho — For 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 911 dispatchers are on the job answering calls for help in emergencies.
"We're here to answer the calls when you're having your worst day," said Jazmine Eguia, an Emergency Communications Officer with the Nampa Police Department.
Eguia has been a dispatcher for 11 years.
"Our days are not typical, they go anything from animal control calls to children locked in vehicles to suicidal subjects to what we call a person down when you don’t know any breathing status, conscious status to cardiac arrests," she said.
Those calls are constant.
"We can take those high-stress calls, those CPR calls, take a breather and then move on with the next call. It's that constant level of vicarious trauma," Eguia said. "It's that constant up and down that we're going through that people don’t realize."
Which makes recognition like National Public Safety Telecommunication Appreciation Week, April 10-16, special and appreciated.
"It's nice to know that not just our agency, but the community is coming together to show us how much they appreciate what we do day in and day out," Eguia said.
Nampa Mayor Debbie Kling stopped by to show her appreciation for the dispatchers as KTVB was at the dispatch center.
"They do so much in our community and sometimes their days are really hard; the perseverance... the teamwork, and the integrity and excellence. I’m just so proud of them and I didn’t want to miss a week to say congratulations and thank you," Kling said.
When this day ends, dispatchers like Eguia, do it all over again the next day.
"We're fortunate enough to be able to unplug here and take a time out in order to regather and come back to work. We talk about it with our partners. If we need to cry about it, if we need to hug it out, if we need to be mad, we're able to do that and then move on and take the next call," Eguia said.
Eguia said the most rewarding part is being able to help people. Also, teamwork is a huge part of what dispatchers do. So if you call, sometimes it may appear they're not getting resources to you fast enough, but they want to stress that as they're taking the call, their partners are also dispatching fire and police at the same time.
The Ada County Sheriff’s Office also shared appreciation for dispatchers. In 2021, Ada County dispatchers answered more than 158,000 9-1-1 calls, according to its Facebook post. That's 17,000 more calls than the year before. ACSO says that's because of Idaho's growth.
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