Last week was National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week. It’s held annually during the second week of April to honor public safety telecommunicators for their commitment, service and sacrifice. NPSTW originated in 1981 with longtime dispatcher, Patricia Anderson, of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office in California who stood up for her fellow “dispatchers” and acknowledged how hard they work.
One afternoon in 1981, Contra Costa County Sheriff Richard Rainey wanted to acknowledge his administrative staff by treating them all to lunch. Traditionally, the administrative staff was never to let their lines go unanswered, so they would transfer their calls to dispatch after hours. Dispatch would just tell the caller to call back during business hours, which generally didn’t impact the dispatch center because the volume was very low, but it did on this one particular instance.
While the administrative staff went to lunch, they did the same thing of transferring the phones, but didn’t warn dispatch about what was about to happen. Dispatch was completely caught off guard when the phone volume suddenly jumped, especially when they were at a minimum due to their own lunch breaks. After the administrative staff came back to work, Patricia Anderson gave Sheriff Rainey a piece of her mind about what was done without their knowledge. Sheriff Rainey didn’t know that this was the practice of the administrative staff and immediately apologized and promised it would never happen again. Later that day, Sheriff Rainey and Under Sheriff Warren Rupf presented dispatch with a beautifully-decorated cake that said, “Happy Dispatcher Week!”
After that day, Sheriff Rainey, Under Sheriff Rupf and Dispatcher Patricia Anderson started an initiative that culminated in what we now know as National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week.