911, What Is Your Emergency?

Wow, its almost been a month since my last entry. I really need to try to stop slacking off so much. LOL. Anyway, I have a rather interesting story to share with you all today. So, without further delay, let's get started.

Yesterday during a break in my English class, I noticed that one of the ladies in our class was wearing a KPD shirt. When she came back into the room, I asked one of my friends that had come back in with her if she was a police officer. He said no, that she was a 911 dispatcher for Kokomo. I couldn't believe it and I knew that I just had to talk to her after class.

When class wrapped up, I asked Andrea if I could talk to her for a few minutes. She said yes, that she wanted to talk to me anyway since I was doing my research paper on seat belts. She told me a story in which the use of a seat belt saved her live. The conversation turned to her being a 911 dispatcher. I told her that I knew someone with the same last name as her's. She said, "Let me guess, Don?" I said yes and she informed me that he was her ex-husband. I asked her if he had ever told her about a friend of his that was in a wheelchair, had MD, and was interested in becoming a dispatcher. She told me he had and I told her that it was me. She said that she figured I was. She said that the first day that I wore my FDNY hat and/or shirt and started talking about fire departments, that I was the kid that Don had told her about. Small world, huh?

I began to ask her questions about dispatching, what was all involved, and whether or not she thought that I would be able to do the job. She informed me that everything was run via CAD, better known as, Computer Aided Dispatch. She said that as long as I could type at a considerable rate, that I shouldn't have a problem.

She is going to talk to her supervisor and see if we can set up a day that I could go and job shadow her. The job shadowing would be a good way for me to see how they perform, at the rate in which they perform, to get a general feel of how 911 dispatching is, and to decide if it's something that I would still be interested in doing and to find out if I would be able to do it successfully as well.

Needless to say, I am pretty excited about this potential possibility. I have been wanting to do something like this for quite some time now. Until yesterday, I had no idea how I was going to go about looking into it. Thankfully I have found that I have a dispatcher in one my classes, and that she seems to be willing to take me under her proverbial wing, show me the ropes, and help me in my pursuit to becoming a dispatcher.

Here's to hoping this pursuit becomes a successful one.

'Till next time.

Jason