Chasing the High

We were sitting around the coffee pot when the first call I’d ever responded to in person came in over the radio. I was doing a ride-along, something Regional tried to get our associated towns to give us when we first start, to get a first-hand look into what our responders experience on a daily basis. As all fire calls, it started with a tone. At the sound, I cut my story off mid-sentence and followed the firefighters around the corner into the vehicle bay.

Liz was driving, and as she prepped for response, she explained what she was doing. “We keep the pants and boots ready to step right into, next to the lockers, so it’s easier when we’re getting ready.” She slung an air tank over her shoulder and told me, “This has about half an hour of breathable oxygen. This will go into the back of my seat.”

I took the seat behind her.

“You buckled?”

“Yep. Now what?”

Thomas threw a playful wink from up front. “Now’s the fun part,” he said. “Now we get on the road and hope for something good.” 

I opened my mouth to say, of course we don’t hope that, because that would mean something bad has happened to somebody! But the sirens roaring to life cut me off, so I sat back. As we made our way through downtown, I realized that what I had been about to say was… well, it wasn’t necessary. I was around firefighters, and they were as crazy for disaster as I was. What I’d been about to say wasn’t just unnecessary: it was downright untrue. I was hoping it was “something good.” And so were they. That’s why they became firefighters. Isn’t it also why I became a dispatcher?

It’s not that we want bad things to happen to people. In a perfect world, nobody would need firefighters, or dispatchers, or any first responders at all. Bad things are going to happen whether we do this job or not. The next best thing to having no disasters at all is having disaster-trained people eager to respond when shit hits the fan.

But in a world where disasters do happen, I thought, it sure is good to know that some people are enthusiastic about helping out. 

It is my opinion that people who say they get into high-stress fields of work like first response or surgery “to help people” aren’t always telling the truth. Or at least, not the whole truth. Maybe some of them really do wake up and think of nothing else than making the world a better place. And most of them probably do want to help people, and do believe that’s the only reason they chose that field. But there’s another reason we all got into it, and it has a lot less to do with philanthropism than we’d like to believe. 

Take, for example, my friend Gabe. This is a man who teared up the first time I ever had a conversation with him, when I told him the story of how my grandfather sold his prized possession, his beautiful, lovingly-restored 1968 Pontiac, when I broke a bunch of my teeth in an accident to pay for implants “so my 18-year-old granddaughter doesn’t have to wake up to her teeth in a glass every morning.” True story. 

He’d spoken to me a grand total of once at that point, and he was so empathetic that the sweet story of familial love brought him to tears. How could somebody so compassionate, who seemed to absorb completely the emotions of others, also be an EMT who saw people die, a firefighter who witnessed families’ homes go up in smoke? After a while, you’d think it would just get to be too much. That the allure of maybe helping someone today would give way to the hopelessness of seeing your efforts go wasted the first time you revive an overdose only to have him die of another a week later. 

So what was it, then, that kept people like him responding to call after call, day after day? If you ask me, it’s the high. 

In the pilot episode of Grey’s Anatomy, titular lead Meredith Grey opens the show with a voiceover playing over shots of her class of first-years rushing around, getting ready for their first day as surgical interns. “The game,” she says. “They say a person either has what it takes to play, or they don’t.” 

That metaphor, of surgery being a game, is continued by a doctor later revealed to be the Chief of Surgery: “Each of you comes here hopeful. Wanting in on the game… The seven years you spend here will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the breaking point… This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play? That’s up to you.” 

After scrubbing in on her first surgery, Meredith tells the doctor who led it, “You think you know what you’re going to feel… but that was such a high. I don’t know why anybody does drugs.” And in the end, as the pilot winds down, the voiceover returns, and Meredith tells the viewers: “I can’t think of any one reason why I want to be a surgeon. But I can think of a thousand reasons why I should quit. They make it hard on purpose. There are lives in our hands… I could quit. But here’s the thing: I love the playing field.”

Meredith’s words resonate with me, as somebody whose job requires me to be responsible for decisions that could, quite literally, change the course of lives. Even be the reason they end. Dispatch may be lower on the risk-factor scale than police or fire or hands-on EMS, since we sit from afar, linked to the unfolding events only by telephone and a radio connection. It isn’t our lives that are at risk if the traffic stop goes bad or the building comes down or the chest pains turn into sudden cardiac arrest. 

But it is my job to run the plates, to see if that driver has outstanding warrants or a violent criminal history. It’s my job to put out the evacuation tones if Command thinks a structure is sufficiently destabilized by fire to necessitate an evacuation. It’s my job to give CPR instructions to keep the cardiac arrest patient’s blood circulating long enough for EMS to arrive and save his life. It actually matters if I make a mistake, because those mistakes can and sometimes do cost lives. 

But that’s exactly why I sought this job out. I love the playing field, too. I live for the high of disaster, for the terrifying, high-stakes moments where it really is life or death. Without it, I’m just the owner of a battered heart, listening over the phone and radio as bad things happen all the time. As people get shot and buildings come down and patients code in the backs of ambulances. All there is between us and the despair is that excitement, the thrill of picking up the phone and hoping for “something good.”

Defend and Serve (The Donuts)

I might've lost my chances at the town job when, in my interview, I made a 'cops-love-donuts' joke in front of two uniformed officers and the dispatch supervisor.

"It can be quite different on the overnights, which is the position you would be filling," the supervisor, Kenneth, told me. "At night, you have two officers and one dispatcher, and that's about it on the PD side. Compare this to the mornings, when the station is full and you see police everywhere."

Dunkin' Donuts Asset Protection patches, according to
my Reg trainer who used to work for them.

"Well, sure," I said, my big mouth moving faster than my common sense. "That's when all the Dunkin' Donuts are open."

The bald officer, whose face had been a mask of indifference if not outright disapproval until now, sat back and moved as if to toss his clipboard to the side, sending my application papers fluttering.  

"Welp," he muttered, a previously unseen yet unmistakably playful gleam in his eye. "You can just throw this one out now." He turned and gestured at the door, as if to beckon in an imaginary next candidate. "Next!" 

The other officer was laughing so hard you might have thought we were at a stand-up audition in a basement comedy club rather than a job interview at a police station.

"I mean no disrespect," I added quickly, though I sensed no real offense had been taken. "I mean, heck, I'll be the guy bringing the Dunkin' Donuts."

Baldy seemed to be sizing me up with new appreciation. "Well, we'll just see about that."

The fact that the remark instead seemed to endear me to them, especially to the crankier of the two cops, was my first clue that this was a good place for me. 

My second clue was their response to my cover letter. 

"I have to say, it's unlike any I've read before," the supervisor said about the letter. The officers flipped the top pages on their clipboards in perfect unison, and I realized they'd each read it.

Swallowing hard, I suddenly wondered if the letter had been a mistake. Well, it was too late to rescind it now. I'd better commit if I wanted this to work out.

"It was a risk," I admitted. "But I feel that what I submitted was a far more honest depiction of who I am, both as a person and as a candidate, than a more traditional format allows for." 

"It certainly did," the supervisor agreed. "I don't think I've ever read anything like that in all of my years in this position."

I walked out of that interview with a confidence I hadn't had walking in. Kenneth shook my hand warmly and told me as I left, "Well, the officers and I will be meeting after you leave to discuss things, and of course nothing can be official until the Chief signs off." 

But I heard the unspoken approval underlying his parting words, and I grinned back, feeling for the first time since the Regional job fell through as though maybe, just maybe, I had a chance at a dispatch career after all.

"I appreciate your time," I told him. "And I look forward to hearing from-- and perhaps working with-- you very soon." 

"You as well," Kenneth said. "Hopefully we will be seeing you very soon."

As I walked out the glass door to the parking lot, I thought back to the donut joke from earlier. "I'll be the one with the donuts," I called behind me. 

The sound of his genial chuckling followed me outside the station as I made my way to my car.

A few hours later, I got his email, which was all but an official offer. As soon as my background check cleared, assuming the Chief approved of me, I would be the fourth member of this town's dispatch team.

When I got home, I reread my cover letter with new appreciation.

To whom it may concern,

There are the rules by which cover letters are written. They are meant to be succinct summaries of employable skills and perfunctory vows of company loyalty, should the candidate be hired. These are the rules I was told to follow when drafting one of my own. 

But as a member of Generation Z, the generation of rule-breakers, and as a writer, I could not bring myself to write something so traditional at the expense of it also being so impersonal and ineffective. If a company wants to hire a robot, that technology is just around the corner. The organization that hires me is welcoming more than just a warm body to their team. 

I am young, but I have lived many lives. I was raised by a Marine in an environment that tolerated no excuses. At 13, I was independently running the youth baseball league snack shack in town while my father coached. By 16, I had kept my family together through a near-disaster that put me in the position as primary caretaker of my two younger brothers. By 18, I received my Diploma and Associate’s in the same week. A few weeks later, I survived shattering my jaw and 20 of my teeth. By the end of college, I had made it through 14 root canals, and now have more crowns than a royal museum. I have faced injury, illness, rejection, failure and more; these have been not malefactors, but some of my very best teachers. 

As told by my work experience, I have the qualifications. But what an employer may not see behind the resume is the tenacity I have built up, a dedication to progress demonstrated by my refusal to quit even when life has given me every excuse. Like coal left to sit under the Earth’s crust, I have been put under immense pressure, and it has made me into something strong enough to cut steel. 

Yet, it was not an unyielding material forged within me, either. It has been the kindness of others that has kept me human. From the nurses who cared for me with cheerful faces and kind words, to family members making immense sacrifices to fund my dental work, to friends who will drop everything to be with me when I am hurting: I have always been surrounded by people who made the difference. It is in recognition of these individuals and their collective impact on my experiences that I model my behavior, professionally and personally. 

In line with Dispatch, I have spent the majority of my life striving to understand and master the art and science of communication. I chose linguistics in college for this reason, and American Sign Language as a focus in order to sharpen my intuitive ability to procure and impart information from and to third parties with a variety of mitigating factors impacting their capacity for functional communication. It is through these experiences that I have developed as a communicator, an advocate, and an ideal candidate for such important work as emergency telecommunications. 

These are the qualities that I hope will set me apart. Many candidates can also type effectively, organize data into spreadsheets, or maintain a positive working environment. But what I have is something deeper than trainable skills. I have indomitable strength, and I have compassion. My trials and tribulations have not made me cold or ruthless; quite the contrary: kindness and compassion, rather than hardness or apathy, make me strong. I can (and have had to) endure much, and this has taught me that while life is full of challenge, the best armor is not cold isolation, but embracing the fact that we all share in our struggles as people. I believe that all we can do is try to make the world a better place, and it is my sincerest hope that I may find a place on your team to do just that.

On the day I was asked to come in to meet with the Chief, I was true to my word, leaving my apartment fifteen minutes early so I could made a stop on the way. I felt a little silly walking in with the big white box, but it proved worth it when, upon seeing the dozen colorful treats lined up in flat Dunkin' box, the Chief's face cracked into a grin. 

"Smart girl," he said, carefully lifting out a chocolate frosted donut with two fingers.

It wasn't the first time that I'd bribed-- ahem, I mean, sweetened the deal for-- a hiring committee with baked goods. The date that Reg interviewed me had coincidentally been my birthday, something I decided to believe was a sign the job was meant to be. At the end of that interview, they asked me if I had any last questions they could answer before we concluded. 

"I do have one more," I admitted, pulling the cloth grocery bag out from beneath my chair. "Is this the kind of working environment where people celebrate with each other, when one of your own has a milestone or life event?"

They looked at each other quizzically, but the general consensus was positive, so I brought the bag up onto the table. 

"That's good," I said, "because I've always been the kind of person to bring cupcakes to work on my birthday. If you noticed the date of birth on my application, you would have noticed that it was twenty-two years ago today."

A murmured chorus of "Oh, happy birthday" rose from the interview panel, fading into surprised silence as I pulled out the pastry box.

"Now, I know that this isn't my work-- yet," I said. "But since I'm hoping it will be soon, I thought that I might as well get a jump on things, seeing as how it will be a whole year before I get the chance to do it again."

The lead interviewer's eyebrows knitted together, and she studied the box. The pastry shop seal was intact, and a gift or favor was only considered in breach of conflict of interest laws if its price exceeded fifty dollars. I assured her they had not cost me that much, so she allowed me to pass them out to the panel. They were pretty vanilla cupcakes, opulently decorated with elegant white frosting and tiny edible pearls.

Once, while I was on an evening shift at the Reg center, I mentioned the cupcake story to a coworker, whose eyes widened. 

"You were cupcake girl?" he asked. Then he laughed and shook his head, eyes rolling good-naturedly. "Of course you were. Maybe that's why you able to get hired without any prior experience."

I know that I wasn't hired at either job because of confectionery bribes. It wasn't even for my cover letter, poignant as it might be. I was chosen because of the potential I showed, and for my attitude. The fact that I wanted to be here, that I was willing to work as hard as it took to be successful as a dispatcher, was the main reason they were willing to take a chance on me.

Even so, I did learn one thing. As with most situations in life, cupcakes and donuts never hurt.

Profile: Gabriel

The first impression I had upon meeting Gabriel wasn't much of an impression at all. I don’t think I noticed, upon first glance, any of the things about him I now consider most notable. Those things are the very things that make him a walking contradiction. Every conversation I had with the guy broadened my comprehension of one of the strangest people I've ever known, full to the brim with conflicting narratives.

Getting to know Gabe is like sitting down with a picture book where none of the illustrations match the stories. For example, you might look at the image of this small man, his full height scarcely clearing my own shoulders, and assume he is lacking in matter of strength. You would be wrong. In fact, Gabe tells me one of the greatest moments of his life was that of his graduation from the fire academy, where he proved every doubter wrong, proved that he was as capable at 4'11 as anyone who wore the fireman's jacket in an XL. 

Being first introduced to his soft voice and kind, unassuming demeanor, and then finding out he's also a badass-- a firefighter, an EMT, a member of our local disaster relief tactical team-- you're left trying to reconcile these two diametric extremes. And even then, you would've only scratched the surface. Soon enough you'd experience his theatrical whimsy, a love of performance never quite outgrown from childhood. In him you meet an actor and musician whose local fame makes it impossible for him to walk undisturbed in public. And beyond even that is a man with a love of the culinary arts, experimenting with gluten free baking so I (a sufferer of Celiac disease) can be included at block parties and potlucks. This is a man who plays violin, covers Sinatra, bakes cookies, rules over Munchkinland in a silly cape, and then goes to work the next morning ready to run into burning buildings.

The story of how Gabe came to be a firefighter dates back decades. "It all kinda started when I got my first radio," he told me once, over coffee and breakfast sandwiches. "That was what first planted the seed, and allowed me to get familiar with public safety." As the story goes, the tow company that his mom worked in advertising for had a police scanner in their office, and when the owner noticed how much this kid, then only eleven, loved listening to it, he gifted Gabriel with the first of many radios he would go on to own throughout his life.

Without the influence of that radio, Gabe might not have become a first responder at all. In fact, his life might have taken another turn entirely. As a teenager, he became very interested in science, and in particular meteorology.

"I became a weather spotter for a local TV station," he says. "I heard that the National Weather Service had a program called SKYWARN. I thought it was the coolest thing and I wanted to be part of it, except I wasn't eighteen. So the only way to get accepted into the program was if you were also a HAM radio operator."

"HAM," or amateur radio, requires a baseline knowledge of how radio systems work, and a license from the FCC. So Gabe went to a friend of his (you'll notice this phrase becoming a recurring theme in his story, as he is one of those people who seems to have friends just about everywhere) who was part of a local amateur radio club, and with some help he was able to study for and pass the exam required to become a licensed HAM operator. This new certification (yet another theme you'll soon notice-- his 20-page resume lists five pages of certifications) now under his belt, he became a SKYWARN spotter.

the first gift I ever gave him was
one of these signs for his garage

"When there were severe thunderstorms or those types of severe weather events," he says, "I'd be on the radio, relaying warnings... telling people what was going on. I had my own office in the house."

It was through the aforementioned radio club that Gabe got his first taste of the public safety field. "I saw the med teams working and I said, that's really cool, I wanna do that," he says. From there, Gabe approached another friend of his, a firefighter from his hometown, who suggested he take a first responder class.

"The way I saw it at the time, it was very advanced. Almost like EMT-level stuff. The two-week course was very exciting. For a seventeen-year-old kid, it was a lot." After receiving his certification, he found himself doing double-duty for the marathon, working both communications and medical. "They loved it because it was one more skill they could use. If they didn't have a HAM on the med team, they'd put me on it because I could do both.

It was around this time that two things happened: First, Gabe joined a local CERT team. This put him in contact with many people from the field of emergency response, and over the years he got more and more deeply involved with his local Emergency Management Agency. Second, he announced to his mother what he really wanted: to become a firefighter. She, however, was less than enthusiastic about the idea. It was too dangerous, she told him. He could get hurt, or killed.

"That turned into... the only real (argument) we ever had," he explains. In the end, they compromised. No firefighting, but Gabe would pursue a career in his dream field through dispatch.

"I was happy with that for a while, volunteering here and there. When I was eighteen I got my first real job doing advertisement... (but) it just wasn't fulfilling to me. I wanted to get paid to do the medical and communications stuff." In an attempt to widen his dispatch horizons, Gabe took on a dispatch position with a private ambulance company.

"Looking back it was a great experience because you had cardiac arrests, traumatic arrests, lots of trauma stuff, childbirth, CPR-- you had that going on on regular basis. I figured if I could handle (that), I can handle anything." Two years later, he found a company a bit closer to home. It was slower-paced, but it would wind up getting him involved in EMS on an even deeper level.

The clinical education coordinator needed CPR instructors. Gabe, of course, volunteered, and took yet another class. Once he had his instructor certification, Gabe was given additional responsibilities, such as training new employees and recertifying the ones whose certs were about to expire. He also took over teaching CPR for schools, businesses, and outside agencies.

 After about three years of this, Gabe went back to his mom with a new proposition. If he was going to make enough money in this field to live on, he was going to have to become an EMT. She resisted at first, but Gabe can be very convincing. So he enrolled in a six-month EMT program and became certified. Now he was a CPR/first aid instructor, an EMT, and a dispatcher for the company, where he stayed for a total of eight years.

"When you're in private EMS as an EMT, the usual goal is to become a paramedic," he explains. "But paramedic school is expensive and it takes a long time. It's basically like going to college for a degree." Instead of trying to go up in EMS, Gabe decided to branch outward, expanding into police and fire. He joined a a volunteer organization that provided what is called "fire ground rehabilitation" services. They would bring drinks, snacks, blankets, sometimes a mobile warming station to combat extreme cold-- anything that would help the responders on a difficult scene.

In 2016, Gabe became involved with another charity: a 5K. It was this involvement that inspired his boss at the ambulance company to say, "You do too much." This he tells me with a laugh, and then continues: "So anyway, I became the first aid coordinator." It started out small, since the race had never had a first aid unit before.

    

"The first year it was just me with my equipment and my first-in bag," he says. "The second year, I recruited some of my EMT friends to help. I bought an AED, acquired O2 tanks... got the whole thing set up with radios. I would be at the finish line, with a friend posted at each checkpoint... Every year it would get bigger and bigger."

In fact, the scope of this project would exceed all expectations. By 2019, "we had course coverage from start to finish, lead and tail vehicles, response teams on bikes. I coordinated with AMA radio to provide communication, and I would meet beforehand with EMS coordinators and fire departments. I pulled some strings and was able to get them dedicated ambulance coverage, for free-- which is unheard of... It was basically like running a non-transporting ambulance and emergency medical response service."

One day, Gabe was working a detail with the ambulance company when he met a member of another local Emergency Management Agency. "At the time, it was not in a good place," he explains. "Vehicles were broken down, certs were expiring, morale was down-- nobody was doing anything."

As his boss had once said, Gabe did (and to this day still does) "do too much." The last thing he needed was another place vying for his unpaid labor. So naturally, what he said was: "I don't really want to take on another volunteer thing, but... bah, whatever. So I joined."

"We did a lot of work," he recounts. "Got the vehicles out of the bunker, which had a problem with constant moisture, leading to rust. So we... got to work." Tirelessly he worked to renew old certs, fix up the ambulances, replace old equipment, and boost the lacking morale of the agency.

Since then, the EMA has gotten new vehicles, taken on new members, and built up a list of events they work.

"Those two events are two of my greatest accomplishments in EMS," Gabe says, gazing off into the distance. I let my eyes follow his and see nothing myself. But whatever it is he's seeing makes him smile wistfully. I've never known Gabe to boast, despite having much to boast about, so hearing him talk about something that he takes this much pride in makes me grin, too.

By now, private EMS was getting to Gabe, so he decided to try his hand at police and fire dispatch. As an intermediate step, he took a security job for a medical facility. The nature of the facility made it a necessity for even the security staff to be first-aid trained, but they had no capacity for in-house training, and the pool of applicants who came pre-trained in both medical and security was shallow. But as soon as they figured out that Gabe was a CPR/first aid instructor and certified first responder, they put his skills to work, and he set about rescuing yet another struggling agency.

"Remember that first responder class I took when I was eighteen? Well, now I'm teaching it," he grins. "Had to get certified to do that too, but we fixed the staffing issues because now we could teach and recertify in-house. I think that's #3 on the great accomplishments list. Took yet another organization that was struggling, fixed their problems and made it better."

With this accomplishment under his belt, it's an easy transition into police and fire dispatch, and in a small town (population just shy of 7,000), he finds his "favorite place in the world." This town means the world to Gabe, even now, after years of working alongside the people who would eventually become like a family to him. For Gabe, somebody for whom "family" meant just him and his mom, that was a big deal. He finally experienced through that town the joy of having cousins and uncles in the form of officers and Sergeants, brothers and sisters in their team of dispatchers and firefighters.

"Finally, I'm in freeze mode," he says. "I'm not looking for any more jobs, just enjoying what I've got. Then, suddenly, my mom died."

The air chills noticeably as he says this, and he again looks out into the distance. I wonder if now it's his mother he's seeing on the other side, and not for the first time, I wish there was something I could say. There's really no right response to something like that. But he only pauses for a moment before bringing the conversation right back home.

"About six months after she passed away, I decided that there was now nothing stopping me from becoming a firefighter." The single most important person in his life, the person who cared about him so much that she begged him not to do something so risky, had died, and now he was determined to see his dream through.

"I sat down with the fire chief and explained my interest." The chief told him that, if Gabe could pass the fire academy, then the town would hire him as a firefighter on the spot. In the meantime, though, would he consider working for their EMS? He accepted, and, "about a year later, there was an opening at the fire academy. I left the private ambulance company at that time, because I couldn't do both. For once in my life, I said, I'm doing too much."

    

"When I'd been working in private EMS, I'd always been told I was too short to be a firefighter," he admits. Then his face splits into a grin so wide, it's almost comical. "So graduating from the fire academy-- passing the physical, the exams and tests and graduating-- it was gratifying. To prove those people wrong. To say, yes, I can be a firefighter."

Things seemed to be going well, except for the fact that firefighters are criminally underpaid, especially in a small town's volunteer department. "Although I love this, I love being a firefighter, love all that I do... I still had to do something to make a decent income. So I turned to some friends, who recommended Regional, where I met you!"

For Gabe, the idea of regionalized dispatch was downright odious. Community-oriented, small-town Gabe turned down their initial offer, in spite of the competitive pay. All he really wanted to do was keep on at the fire department as a dispatcher and EMT-firefighter, and the security job as a training coordinator. It wasn't until the second time they approached him that he begrudgingly accepted, dropping his other roles down to part-time or per diem.

To be honest, as much as I know he detests it there, I am personally so grateful that he took the job, because it's not every day you get to meet people with stories like his. It's Reginal I have to thank for introducing me to one of my best friends, and for that, I will never not be grateful.

Deaf Americans and 9-1-1

It was sweet that he thought of me when he heard another police department over our region's shared police frequency, requesting the assistance of an officer fluent in American Sign Language with the arrest of a Deaf individual. Maybe the appropriate response would have been something along the lines of, hey, neat!

But I didn't think it was neat, and I still don't. In fact, it bothered me. 

the official symbol for ASL interpreters,
based on the sign for "interpreting"

"That's super illegal," I texted Gabe back. "They can’t use an officer. A Deaf person has the right to a certified interpreter."

"Interesting," he sent back. "That's good to know."

But I wasn't done. "Just think about it," I continued. "If their Miranda rights aren’t read, correctly and in full, the entire arrest is bonk. How much worse do you think it could be if an un-licensed cop plays interpreter and screws something up? Even if they don’t, there’s no accountability. It’s a really risky game to play, as a department. You don't fuck with the ADA unless you want a serious lawsuit."

In 1990, then-President George H. W. Bush signed the ADA into law. The Americans with Disabilities Act was meant to protect individuals with a wide array of disabilities, a category that includes the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

President George H. W. Bush signing the ADA, July 26, 1990

“The ADA broadly protects the rights of individuals with disabilities in employment, access to State and local government services, places of public accommodation, transportation, and other important areas of American life. The ADA also requires newly designed and constructed or altered State and local government facilities, public accommodations, and commercial facilities to be readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities."

Americans with Disabilities Act: Title II Regulations (.pdf)

There are a few different ways that dispatchers are expected to comply with ADA expectations. The first method is using TTY technology, with which our 9-1-1 systems are required to comply. There's also text-to-911 services, some of which work better than others, and silent call procedures, in which a party unable to unwilling to speak aloud can still communicate with dispatchers. 

But even after the call, there are a thousand different ways that a deaf person can be failed by emergency responders. From police interactions to neglect in the courtroom, the issue is broad and systemic, and fixing it is going to require more than just attention and awareness.  

For a d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing person, the right to an interpreter is probably the most important right protected by the ADA. After all, the primary barrier of deafness is communication. How are you supposed to know what you're in trouble for when you're arrested, or follow along in your own court case, or tell the police what happened if you're a victim of a crime?

The ADA is supposed to protect against these sorts of injustices, but unfortunately, as demonstrated by the fact that we heard one of our own local PDs requesting an officer with ASL knowledge over the radio, the follow-through just isn't always there. The resources allocated to teaching law enforcement how to deal with individuals with disabilities are severely lacking. As Professor of Sociology Alex Vitale of Brooklyn College states, “Police compliance with ADA provisions is pretty poor across the board. It’s clearly not a priority for a lot of police leaders." 

In some places, in spite of the ADA, violations happen all the time. In 2012, St. Louis police tasered a deaf man on the side of the road, only for it to turn out he was having a diabetic emergency. Then in 2014, an elderly deaf man was dragged from his car and beaten by officers, before being charged with resisting an arrest by the same department that cleared the officers of all wrongdoing. A month later, a deaf man had been similarly beaten, tased, and choked out after being mistaken for a burglar. The officers had seen him signing, trying to communicate with them, and believed the movements to be signs of aggression, and had responded in kind.

This problem has been addressed by independent journals, such as The American Civil Liberties Union and The Atlantic, as well as in a humorous episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, guest-starring Deaf activist and entertainer Nyle DiMarco.

However, there hasn't been much coverage of D/deaf interactions with law enforcement in the mainstream media, with the exception of those reports where things do get out of hand. Like with many issues of civil rights, pleas for systemic change continue to go unaddressed, or are only addressed after tragedy occurs. More often than not, too, these are underwhelming measures that smack of PR damage control, and are unlikely to maintain traction after the initial outcry dies down.

There is a reason the law requires anyone who is serving as an interpreter in any official capacity to be certified. Without those protections, children may be coerced into interpreting for parents, which opens up all sorts of issues, both for the child and for the efficacy of services being provided.

Many of the same issues arise when unqualified third parties are asked or compelled to serve in the same way. Interpreters are held accountable to standards of care, much in the same as their doctors and judges are. They are trained in the language's nuance, in skills for effectively communicating complex ideas to and for their Deaf clients. Furthermore, there is a code of ethics, compliance to which can help ensure privacy, regulate appropriate intervention, and serve as a framework for professionalism.

Of course, a national interpreter shortage is part of the issue. In college, I chose the ASL Linguistics track, which focuses on the science of language with ASL as a model, rather than the ASL Interpreting track. This was a decision that many of my peers and even some professors expressed disappointment in, as there is such a profound disparity between the needs of the community and the available resources. I chose dispatch over working directly in the Deaf community, but my background both through my education and in the jobs I worked between the years of 2018 and 2023 has given me insights that I assume the department making the request did not have.

However, as a hearing person with no experience trying to run a law enforcement agency, I am far from qualified to decide what is and is not an acceptable risk. I don't know what was going on at that department. I don't know what kind of attempts may have been made to locate a certified interpreter before they put out that request over the radio. What I do know is that it's still unacceptable. 

Unfortunately, I don't have the answer. I'm just one dispatcher, in one small-town PSAP, with one set of ideals that I wish I could see reflected in the big wide world outside. But I can write, and so I do. I write to inform, to entertain, to commiserate with you, dear reader, dear stranger. I write in hopes that someday, somebody with more power than me understands what needs to be done, and sees it through. 

In the meantime, we can write. We can write to our representatives, calling them to action. We can write to police departments out of which atrocities are born, and demand justice for those wronged. We can write, and we can speak up. We can learn sign language and support organizations that support our local disabled communities. We can listen to the voices of those who experience the world a little differently to us, and maybe, just maybe, we'll be part of the force of change that makes the world a better place for all.

For Americans who want to make a difference, to find and contact your state representative, visit the U. S. House of Representatives website and search by your state and district. The same can  be done for state senators here. The National Association of the Deaf has a great letter template found here that you can use as well.

If you are able to and wish to donate financially to local or global Deaf activism groups, the bottom of this Wikipedia page contains a list of organizations from all over the world.

For works cited, see here. 

Adjustments

Training began in earnest on November 13th. I was scheduled for a few rotations of morning shifts, 0700 to 1500. Then I'd do a few rotations of the eves, 1500 to 2300, and then my last two rotations would be overnights, 2300 to 0700 the next morning. If all went according to schedule, I'd be signed off on December 16th.

The purpose of staggering them like this, Kara told me, is to help ease the transition to night shifts. For her, adjusting to the overnights back when she was new had been a struggle. Taking her advice, I began to push myself to stay up later and later after evening shifts, forcing my body to adjust to being awake all night and sleeping during the day. 

At first, it was hard. With everything closed and my roommate asleep, I spent the first two or three nights after getting off at 2300 (11 PM, to the uninitiated) creeping around the house as silently as I could, reading books and drinking coffee until the early hours of the morning, when I could fight the exhaustion no longer. Then I'd drift off into a fitful, restless sleep until the sunshine beckoned me out of bed again. 

Self-doubt crept back in. I was starting to wonder if I was fighting a losing battle, if maybe Reg hadn't known all along the infallible truth: that I wasn't cut out to be a dispatcher. But the others, Kara and the supervisor and Dean-- the sometimes-cranky but always supportive third full-timer-- never lost hope in me. So I made a game plan.

First, I attacked the issue of the bright daylight hours robbing me of any good sleep. I bought blackout curtains and a sleep mask, added a pair of expensive soundproof headphones to my Amazon wish list (promising myself I'd buy them with my first overtime check), and a few days' supply of melatonin. Then, I found the nearest 24/7 gym. By the time I staggered in after my evening shift, the gym would be nearly empty. I'd stay from around midnight until the first few early-birds began to straggle in, between 4:30 and 5:30 AM. 

The exercise helped me a lot, as I soon realized that I wasn't just adjusting well; I was thriving. Keeping active left me more focused, in higher spirits, and eating better. I probably shed a few pounds too, something few if any can claim came about as a result of a dispatch career.

On the treadmill, instead of listening to a book or gazing vacantly at the TVs with their endless silent entertainment, I set up a map of the town, or printed copies of local policies and procedures. Between reps on the machines, I'd flip through Quizlet sets of town cops and their badge numbers, and put in order the list of tasks necessary during a working fire call. 

Thanks to Gabe, I had a scanner already programmed with the police and fire radios. He'd also introduced me to an app that gave me access to many of these channels live on my phone. I focused on the different voices I heard, learning to recognize the ones I'd be communicating with most at work. The "radio-ear" I'd started developing at Reg, I now fine-tuned. In an emergency, there wasn't time to be constantly asking, "What did they just say?"

I was ready. One month, six work rotations, and I was ready. In the end, Gabe was right. All I'd needed was the right kind of support. When December 16th finally rolled around, I went in with full confidence that I could do it, that I'd been adequately trained for any situation that might arise. 

There was only one concern: overnights were slow, and if, for my last shift, the dispatch supervisor didn't see me handling any actual emergencies, he might decide he couldn't sign me off tonight. The last three overnights had seen a combined total of one 9-1-1 call, which turned out to be accidental, and a handful of traffic stops. 

But fate must have been on my side, if not on the side of the elderly woman who called 9-1-1 to request an ambulance for her husband. The supervisor, halfway through my processing of the call, actually said, "I could walk out right now and go home." 

That was it. On the morning of December 16th, I walked out with the stamp of approval of the dispatch supervisor, and two days off to enjoy before I started working the desk alone. 

The next night, Gabe and I toasted with a bottle of champagne I'd  been holding onto in hopes of this very occasion, and he gave me a "graduation" present. It was a custom-made Dispatch polo and a glittery gold travel mug that had my name emblazoned on one side, while the other proudly announced: 9-1-1 Dispatcher.

"I've been holding onto it since Regional," he told me, his smile so full of pride that I couldn't help grin back. "That's how sure I was that you'd be successful, if not there then somewhere else. Somewhere that supported you." 

"They surely do here," I admitted, hugging him a bit tighter. "And I couldn't be more grateful to them, or to you."

New PSAP, New Me

I was let go two weeks ago, and to be completely honest, I almost quit on dispatch entirely.

When Reg told me, "This job is hard; it's not for everyone," that felt like permission to fail. I didn't accept that. I didn't need permission to fail; I needed determination to succeed.

“Of course this job is hard," I thought. "And it’s not a job for just anyone. But hell, I’m not ‘just anyone.’ I’m ME. I’m intelligent and motivated and hardworking. I have my limitations, but they’re in my body, not my brain. My mind is capable of anything I put it to, as long as I don’t quit, don’t slack, don’t accept excuses for failure.” 

Seeing those thoughts written out, it sounds narcissistic. Like I think the world of myself, and couldn't imagine not being good at something. But really it's the opposite. I didn't tell myself that stuff because I believed it; I told myself that to try to make myself believe it, to keep myself moving forward no matter what. 

My whole life I've been mediocre. If I slacked, I'd fall behind, but if I worked really, really hard, I could achieve... mediocrity. And then Reg came along. They looked at me, and they said, "We think you just have what it takes to make it here." but when I look at my skills and my strengths, and then I look at what a good dispatcher should be, they all seem to line up. So I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could be good. 

More than anything, I think what I really wanted was to be exceptional. People at Reg always mentioned so-and-so trainee who never made it, and such-and-such who dropped out due to the pressure. And it made sense. Reg was like the Harvard of PSAPs. Only the best survived there, and almost everyone who did came from a background in dispatch already. I wanted, for once in my life, to qualify among the best, to set myself apart. 

The day that Regional told me that I was being let go, Gabe (more on him at a later date) was on his way out when I was on my way in. They gave me the news at the beginning of my shift, so we both wound up leaving around the same time after all. He found me in my car, staring glassily ahead.

He crawled into my front seat, not needing to be asked. For a while we just sat. And then I started to cry.

He told me something that, honestly, I didn't immediately take to heart, but that would stay with me forever all the same.

"You will not fail at being a dispatcher. I cannot promise what happens at Regional. But I can promise you that you will not fail at being a dispatcher at another PSAP."

The reason I didn't take it to heart immediately was because I didn't want to go to another PSAP. I wanted to succeed among the Navy SEALs of dispatch. I tried to explain this to him, and he told me: "Regional is intense, even for me. When I tell my single-PSAP dispatcher friends about it, they always say, I could never do that. Please don't think you can't be a 911 dispatcher just because you are struggling at Regional."

And maybe he was right, but I still felt like a failure. 

In a near-whisper, I said: "I just wanted to shine."

"Trust me," he promised, "You will. And when that day comes, I'll say I told you so." 

That was late October, and the day for him to make good on his promise came today, in the form of an email from the Dispatch Supervisor from a town adjacent to mine. 

Dizzy,

It was great chatting with you today to review your resume and cover letter, and to learn more about you and the qualifications you would bring to our department. The interview panel met after you left, and we were all equally impressed with the caliber of applicant that you are, and believe that you will be a valuable addition to our team.

For this reason, I would like to move forward with you in the hiring process. We are excited about the prospect of having you join our department and believe that your contributions will make a significant impact on our agency’s success and mission. We look forward to your positive response and the opportunity to work together.

I start in two weeks. 

When I texted Gabe to tell him the good news, he said exactly what I was expecting him to:

"This is the day I say I told you so. Congratulations, my friend."

I'm still worried that I won't make it, but Gabe's confidence in me, the enthusiasm of the supervisor upon meeting me, the warmth of the embrace of my new work community-- all of that gives me hope that maybe, there's still hope for me yet. Maybe I don't have to be exceptional to be good enough. And just maybe, with the right support, I really will be able to thrive here.

The Roof is on Fire (Part 3: Too Soon?)

…and then we were both howling. It's probably sheer luck that we didn't crash on the way home, because the rest of the drive was spent in hysterics, taking turns volleying fire-related jokes:

"Did you hear about the fire in the shoe factory? Many soles were lost."  

"Why do ducks have flat feet? To stomp out forest fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stomp out flaming ducks!" 

"My grandfather always said, “Fight fire with fire.” He was a great man, but a terrible firefighter."

…while the stereo played that old familiar song, and we laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all. "The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire..."

And that's when I knew I'd be okay. (Part 1: Backstory)

What I would've given to be there the night that Gilbert Gottfried gave what, to this day, remains one of the most iconic performances at a Hollywood Roast. It was the roast of Hugh Heffner, which means it was bound to be lascivious. Pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable is part of the tradition of the Hollywood Roast, and Gottfried himself has a long and rather sordid track record of doing just that. 

“I have to catch a flight to California," Gottfried tells the audience. "But I can’t get a direct flight. They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.”

This is a joke that, today, might have seemed pretty tame compared to a lot of the 9/11 jokes that have been made in the past twenty-odd years. But it elicited groans of disgust and furtive boos from the audience. Gottfried-- already famous (infamous?) for a sense of humor that some might credit to his gumption, while others will call inappropriate and insensitive-- became one of the most, if not the single most controversial and iconic public displays of gallows humor ever uttered before a crowd.

The phrase, "Too soon!" could be heard among the boos of the audience that night. Two decades later, Vice released a documentary by that name, raising the question: at what point are we allowed to laugh after something terrible happens?

Apparently, two weeks was enough time: enough to laugh, if not to at the tragedy then at least in the midst of it. As the news continued to rehash the attacks over and over, the host of that year's already controversial Roast launched into another joke, and suddenly an auditorium full of people went absolutely hysterical with laughter.

"I'd lost an audience bigger than anybody has ever lost an audience," Gottfried explains later. "People were booing and hissing... oh my God. I was floating through outer space." So, he thought, "why not go to an even lower level of hell?"

"The Aristocrats" is one of the dirtiest jokes of all time. Gottfried himself didn't write it, and he certainly wasn't the first to tell some version of it. The routine has been around in comedy circles for years. Every comedian who uses it has a unique retelling, taking the same generally dirty premise and adding in whatever other repugnant details seem right in the moment. Gottfried's version was no exception, and it may have become the most famous, in part, for some of the repugnant details he includes.

You might think that an audience sensitive to the airplane-hijacking reference wouldn't have responded much better to this depraved ditty, but what happened next was a sensation in the world of comedy.

“The laugh was so deep and cathartic that people were coughing up pieces of lung,” recalls reporter Frank DiGiacomo. “It was amazing... he had united everybody in that one moment."

Gottfried himself was even a bit shocked at the overwhelming response. "The audience was going wild (with) the biggest laughs I ever heard."

What rang out from that auditorium was the sort of laughter that shook stadiums, changed lives, saved teetering comedy careers. World-renowned celebrities dressed to the nines in elegance and class were falling out of their seats, crumpling designer suits as they clutched their sides. Faces well-known to glamour magazines turned red under layers of concealer and cream, contorting as the uncontrollable need to laugh overtook them all. Tears stained glittering gowns as the unthinkable happened, as the people in that room were released, for that one shining moment, from the weight of tragedy, the shackles of couth, the hollowness left by weeks of endless mourning.

It was the sort of laughter that healed.

"I’ve always said tragedy and comedy are roommates," Gottfried explains. "Wherever tragedy’s around, comedy’s a few feet behind... sticking his tongue out and making obscene gestures. When you go to a funeral, the guy at the podium will say embarrassing stories about the guy in the box, and people will laugh... (and) hold their hands over their face like, Oh, I shouldn’t be laughing at this."

But why shouldn't they be?

I think it's a shame that funerals are considered universally inappropriate places for laughter. That isn't to say that churches full of grieving families dressed in black ought to be treated as basement improv clubs or the cemetery as a stand-up audition. No doubt many of those burying their loved ones just won't be in the mood for glib.

But when I think of my own funeral, of the time when it will be my loved ones gathering because I'm the guy in the box, I like to imagine a room filled with laughter. I want to know that they're remembering me as I am now, laughing and playing and pretending death isn't just one missed turn signal or grim-faced doctor's proclamation away from us all.

The trauma of losing my house in a fire pales considerably next to stories of rescue workers and those trapped within the rubble on September 11th, 2001. Which is why I do not intend to compare the two, or hold others to my own timeline of recovery. My intention is never to criticize those who prefer to mourn in more traditional ways, but rather to pose the question: Is there such thing as a universal standard of "too soon"? 

When I told a firefighter from one of my towns that I had lost my cat in a fire, he was sympathetic. 

"I'm so sorry to hear that," he told me. "I'm sorry you had to lose a family member in such a horrible way."

I shrugged. "Sure, I guess I did lose a family member, and that's pretty sad." Then my grin turned sideways. "But I got a pretty cool frisbee out of it."

Apparently I'm not the only writer comedically capitalizing
off the loss of a pet.

In between approving guffaws, he slapped my shoulder amiably and said, "Oh, you're going to fit in just fine here."

By "here," I know he didn't mean that town's fire department. What he had meant to express was his  I'd adjust nicely into the public safety field, because I had demonstrated competence with the national language of first responders: gallows humor.

Discretion is key when utilizing humor as a coping mechanism. Part of discretion is knowing how long to wait before laughing at something. Two weeks after 9/11, there were still funerals going on. Firefighters and officers who had braved the rubble of the city's once proud monument to commerce were still reeling from the catastrophic events that threatened the American way of life. Family members were still inconsolable, and many of the children of the fallen had not yet fully realized that Mom or Dad really wouldn't be coming home this time. So that, perhaps, was too soon. 

But twenty years later, jokes about 9/11 can be funny, as Jimmy Carr proved in 2022 with this absolute knock-out. Legend has it Carr tested the joke on Davidson himself, and Pete gave his go-ahead before it was told in front of the Hollywood Roast crowd. In this way, he proved that a joke, far darker than Gottfried but told twenty years later, can be laughed at without guilt.

It's as they say: tragedy + time = comedy. The twin masks of the theater represent the relationship between the two. Along with comedians, first responders are among those who have cracked the formula for dealing with hard shit. We cope with the difficult things we have to witness every day by deciding, at some point, that it has to be funny. It has to be funny, or else the trauma wins. Tears of sorrow will eventually become tears of laughter, as soon as you're ready to allow them to.

Knowing the rules is important. You can't laugh at someone else's trauma until they laugh at it first, and even then it's often wise to leave the joke-making to them. You also can't be insensitive to the fact that not everybody is comfortable with gallows humor. Knowing your audience, respecting the healing timeline, engaging in a way that will draw people together rather than drive them apart-- these are the skills comedians both professional and amateur must develop before attempting to get the tears flowing.

Though risky, dark humor can be incredibly healing. Cliché as it sounds, shared laughter brings people together. Memes about unpleasant mundane experiences go viral because we see ourselves as well as each other in them. The fact that our experiences are universal means that we're all in this together, and that means that no matter what happens, none of us are ever alone.

Pain is the most reliable constant in all of human history, a "common thread" tying together the entire human race. We all suffer, so why shouldn't our suffering at least mean something? At least when we also choose to share in the struggles of life, we can end the day by laughing together, too.