By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WARSAW — Amanda See says working as an emergency dispatcher can be “rewarding” albeit “stressful.”

She shared about a call she took as a dispatcher “quite a few years ago.”

“I took a chest pain call at a local car dealership,” she said. “The ambulance happened to be around the corner, so they went straight there and picked him up and they knew he was having a heart attack. (They) took him straight to Lutheran and they had him in the … lab within an hour of calling us for an ambulance, so it’s cool that we get to be a part of that.”

See, who’s worked both full- and part-time for Kosciusko County Dispatch for 12 years, took over as the director of 911 operations for the county in February.

Amanda See

She’s from Leesburg and lives there with her husband, Jeff See, and their daughters, Kate and Avery. The Warsaw Community High School graduate has “pretty much lived in the (Kosciusko County) area my whole life,” she said.

Working for emergency services comes “naturally” to her, due to her family background, she said.

“My dad’s been a fireman for many years,” See said. “I have law enforcement in my family. Emergency services has just always been very interesting to me.”

“I love helping people, and so actually my grandma was a dispatcher many, many years ago for Kosciusko County, so it’s just kind of come naturally, I think,” she said.

As the director of 911 operations, See oversees the county’s 17 full-time and two part-time dispatchers, with the help of Assistant Director Tami Brooks.

“My job is to make their job as easy as it can be and to help them have the technology and the resources they need because the job is extremely stressful,” she said. “It’s hard enough, so you need somebody who’s there to support you.”

See added dispatch staff can meet with a counselor the sheriff’s office has if they need mental health support.

See’s other tasks include working with J&K Communications “to make sure we have our radios working properly” and serving as the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office’s Indiana Data and Communications System coordinator.

“I handle the system that runs our license plate checks, our warrant entries, our driver’s license checks,” she said of the latter task.

Dispatchers have “between 12 and 16 weeks of on-the-job training,” said See. They also take state courses.

“They’re on probation for a year (after they start),” she added. “This job, there’s so many little parts to it, like we have to know a little bit of law enforcement, a little bit of fire, a little bit of EMS, a little bit of dive, a little bit of all of these special areas within each agency that it takes at least a year if not closer to two or three years to really feel like you’re in a groove.”

See said classroom time has been added to new dispatchers’ training.

“Previously we’ve just thrown them in, like you’re just sitting there with a trainer and you’re listening for about a week and then you start doing things,” she said. “(It) works sometimes, but it’s hard when you don’t get (it).”

“(In) this job you have so many different things to learn that don’t happen all the time,” she continued. “We’re hoping through some classroom time that we can go over more of those.”

All dispatchers must also have continuing education so they can “give CPR instructions over the phone,” she said.

See said while other counties have enough employees that multiple people work on different aspects of the same emergency call, Kosciusko dispatchers generally have to handle them all.

“They call-take; they dispatch; they follow their call,” she explained. “If … we’re giving them CPR instructions and if our partners aren’t busy, they’ll dispatch it for us. (However) if our partners are busy and on another priority call, then (we’re) trying to give CPR instructions … and then also telling the responders where to go and this is what’s happening … It’s really hard when it’s a very busy night.”

See is grateful to Kosciusko County Sheriff Jim Smith for helping “recently to get us more dispatchers.”

“We’re pretty short-staffed compared to other counties our size … because we’ve honestly only increased one position in the last probably 15 years I think,” she said. “I mean it’s long overdue.”

See said the county averages 125 emergency calls a day and 200 to 250 non-emergency ones. Summers “are a lot busier” due to “the lakers” coming in, she added.

She’s hopeful the state will implement a tool which will allow a video of what a 911 caller is seeing to go to first responders and dispatchers.

“I don’t know how soon that is, but personally I think it would be a nice thing because we can only go by what they’re telling us and sometimes they exaggerate way too far and other times they don’t tell us enough,” she said. “It even has location-tracking so if we have somebody lost in the woods, we could send them that link and that would help an officer or fire department.”

She’s open to allowing area police officers, firefighters and EMS workers to visit the dispatch center to learn about what dispatchers go through.

“It’s very rewarding. It’s very stressful,” said See of being a dispatcher. “You don’t get the appreciation. Other responders (sometimes) get frustrated because there’s only three of us to take care of all of them, so … you have to kind of brush that off.”

“I would say anybody who has a passion for helping people or taking care of finding people the help that they need, it’s definitely a job that’s good to look into,” she said.