It’s National Telecommunicators Week and it’s a time to highlight dispatchers who work behind the scenes of emergency calls with emergency, rescue and law enforcement agencies.

Fifteen-year veteran Mindy Durlam started off as a part-time dispatcher and jailer for the Greene County Sheriff’s office and eventually became a full-time dispatcher. She primarily works 8am to 4pm and sometimes 4pm to midnight shifts. She also has a family with school-age kids and talks about trying to balance family life with her sometimes high stress work life.

“I think they’re adjusted. My older kids sometimes aren’t really impressed that I know so many people. But sometimes I do miss a baseball game or a kids program. But I think in general they understand it’s important to be here.”

Durlam is responsible for all business and emergency 911 calls to the law enforcement center, along with radio traffic and entering state and nation-wide arrest warrants. She even monitors the National Weather Service, along with monitoring the jail and the exterior and interior of the building. Durlam says each dispatcher has to have at least eight hours of continuing training on annually.

Durlam points out that when she takes a call, part of the training is to have a calm demeanor and ask questions to find information from the caller to help each situation. However, she adds that when there are multiple situations happening simultaneously, there’s no perfect way to handle everything.

“The many dispatchers I’ve trained over the years that’s the one thing that I’ve always told them, ‘I do not know how to teach you how to manage being on a phone call, then being on the radio at the same time, and then oh hang on let me answer this 911 call.’ You can’t teach that. I don’t know if it’s just something you have to have or if it’s something you just adapt to, but I’ve never been able to pinpoint that.”

Durlam notes she’s enjoyed her time as a dispatcher and continues to enjoy her job of helping others. The other Greene County Dispatchers include: Lesa Seil, Matt Roberts and Jean Tuhn as the other full-time staff. Those who are part-time dispatchers are: Dallas Chargo, Terry Hoefle, Kacey Miller, Sandy Grover and Garrett Riedesal.