National Telecommunicators Week highlights those individuals that are on the receiving end of emergency calls and perform other services to the community in times of need.

Mindy Durlam has been a dispatcher for the Greene County Sheriff’s Office for 21 years. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio that she was working as a nursing assistant when a friend of hers who was a dispatcher at the time asked her to watch what a dispatcher does and she knew from then on that’s what she wanted to do.

As the senior member of the dispatchers, Durlam takes on a self-responsibility to ensure that there’s a cohesive team environment between all of the dispatchers.

“I like to be a teambuilder. I would rather (have) everybody working together, be on the same page, rather than you know, someone just kind of trying to take over. I like to do a lot of updating and training, and keeping everyone on the same page. If I feel like one of the dispatchers are having an issue or a bad day, like I want to come in and talk to them, I want to see if there’s anything that we can do. I just want to keep everyone happy.”

Durlam comes from a family background of public servants.

“I grew up around it. My dad was the fire captain, and having relatives that were firemen, and my aunts always had scanners, so I heard it all the time. My babysitter even had a scanner that I could hear my mom on because she worked for the DOT (Department of Transportation). I mean it was just always interesting.”    

Durlam adds that some of her job responsibilities include monitoring and alerting law enforcement and first responders of severe weather, communicate and page out county emergency entities and surrounding agencies, entering citations and warrants into the state system, monitoring the jail, as well as taking all emergency and non-emergency calls in the county.