Always on call

Othello dispatcher part of a family tradition

OTHELLO — On Sue Long's desk sits Mobley, a tropical betta fish whose quiet but entertaining ways may make him the perfect addition for the Othello Police Department dispatch office.

Long admits Mobley, and fellow betta Rerun, add a lighthearted tone to the otherwise very serious emergency dispatcher desk. The two fishbowls create a bright splash between calls for emergencies, or calls from those seeking the route of the day's parade.

"They're kind of calming," she said of the city department's permanent residents. The fish have become a favorite of officers, who take time on breaks to feed them and peer into the bowls.

"It's just something different, and I guess something they haven't had here before," she said.

Long feels you have to have those lighthearted moments, and a laugh when the moment calls for it.

Born and raised in Othello, the dispatch work has been a sort of family tradition for Long. Her father retired from the OPD as a lieutenant in the 1980s, and her mother used to dispatch during swing shifts from an "old-fashioned type" radio inside the family home.

"It's in my blood, and before I did this I was an EMT for five years," Long said.

Long said she waited until her own children were older before becoming an EMT, and then a dispatcher. She now serves as one of five clerk/dispatchers in the city, a position Long has held for the last five yeas.

"You have to be kind of an adrenaline junkie, for lack of a better word, to do this," she said, and she admits she likes it when the office is busy with calls. But it can be scary too.

Probably the scariest for Long was when one of the department's officers and Adams County deputies were involved in a shooting last year, in which a deputy was injured. She said the moment was one that made officers realize that incidents like the shooting can happen in a small town like Othello, "and you thank God that officers are trained well."

Any city police officer who needs to go to a call gets dispatched through Othello. Emergency 911 calls go to Ritzville, but any call pertinent to the Adams County panhandle is then dispatched to Long and her co-workers. In addition to the OPD, city dispatchers work with Adams County deputies, and Adams County ambulance and fire services in the county panhandle.

"That is one of our biggest jobs, to keep track of our officers out in the field," Long said, noting that dispatchers are the officers' first link when they get into trouble.

Dispatchers have to relay as much information as possible when they get a call to help patrol officers do their jobs.

"We have questions we ask to pull info out of the caller," Long said. "We try to get the who, what, where, when, why out of the caller."

She said it's not unusual for her to stay on a 911 call until an officer or ambulance arrives. Dispatchers try to help keep people calm, or help at a time when they might be able to.

But the job is much more than just dispatching calls; and includes everything from entering protection orders, to giving directions to tourists to answering any of a number of questions from those who walk into the police department lobby.

Long feels like she works for the citizens of Othello.

"I love the interaction with the public, whether good or bad," she said.

Call volumes in Othello can vary widely. She can go hours without a call, and then, all of a sudden, those calls start coming in. And there's no guarantee that weekends will prove busier than a Monday night.

The craziest incidents always seem to happen when the night is bright, and the moon is full. Long said when those calls come in, the officers and dispatchers will look at the calendar, sure enough, full moon.

"We are big believers in the full moon theory," she said.

For Long, the hardest part of coming to the job later in life was learning the computer system. She said being out of the workforce for 30 years, she was new to computers. And at first she remembers the frustration at the beginning while learning the different codes one must know when dispatching over the radio. She called her first months on the job, "a learning experience for my brain."

And since she's started, the technology has continued to improve. The city has added cameras, new computer systems and in-car computers for the patrol officers.

"There's not a day that I don't walk away from this job that I don't learn something new," she said.

When she's not dispatching, Long said she's trying to spend time with her grandsons in Coulee City. She said she does sometimes give up family time to work a 4 p.m. to midnight shift. But Long said her family understands, and the fact she likes her job makes it an easier task.

"I think we all do it for various reasons," Long said. "Either you love doing it or you hate doing it and we wouldn't obviously be here if we hated doing it. It's just interesting work."