It’s National Telecommunicators Week and the job of a dispatcher isn’t for everyone.

Matt Roberts has been a dispatcher for the Greene County Sheriff’s Office since 2009. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio there are several responsibilities, including paging out law enforcement, fire departments, and emergency medical services, along with monitoring the weather, business alarms and the county jail, as well as doing administrative work such as entering warrants on suspects and intercepting all calls that come into the law enforcement center in Jefferson. 

Roberts says through being an emergency medical technician and a firefighter, he’s learned how to manage what can be a stressful job as a dispatcher.

“You’ve got to be calm, you’ve got to get the information. It’s sometimes tough, we’ve had tough calls before. You’re trying to calm people down and it’s really hard because something drastic has happened or something tragic, they’re really emotional. It’s sometimes hard because you only have one dispatcher and we could have two emergencies in separate parts of the county, and you’ve got to do what you need to do, as quick as possible, and make timely decisions in seconds.”

Roberts explains that he enjoys being a dispatcher to help other people and the community, when a lot of the job is “behind the scenes.”

“I also like helping people sometimes during the worst times of their lives when they are calling us. And that’s because they’re usually in an emergency of some sort, and you’ve got to talk to these people and get the information you need so you can get help to them, but you’re also helping them because you’re the first contact of anybody.”

Roberts recalls one call he took at the end of a shift about a baby who was not breathing.

“So I took the call and paged out whoever I needed to page out. And since I was just getting off (my dispatch shift) I’m an EMT so I went to the call myself, and actually did CPR on the baby and the baby lived. It’s the only time I’ve ever done CPR on anybody that has lived.”

To hear more from Roberts about National Telecommunicators Week, listen to today’s Community State Bank in Paton Let’s Talk Greene County program.