Who you gonna call?

CLOVIS — Before the ambulance or the fire truck or the police cruiser, there’s usually a phone call. Before you speak with any officers, you talk with a dispatcher, sometimes called the first of the first responders.

Taking those calls is no small job, either. There are usually only two, sometimes three dispatchers on duty during any given shift, and they have the formidable task of prioritizing multiple calls at once, ranging from a dire emergency to an accidental dial, while also coordinating follow-up information and service for responders. Speed is important, but so is calmness.

That’s the situation for Amber Ruiz, a dispatcher of almost five years with the Clovis Police Department.

“It’s just something I thought about for a long time. I love to help people,” she told The News in a phone interview Wednesday. “I’m not directly on scene with people, but just knowing that I can answer that phone and be that calm voice and be the help they need, I love it.”

Ruiz has dealt with plenty in her time on the job, including fielding calls Aug. 28 during the shooting incident at the Clovis-Carver Public Library. Dispatchers rotate through daytime, evening and overnight shifts every three months, but there’s no telling what may happen when.

“You never really know,” she said. “We have more administrative stuff during the day, but any call can come in at any given time.”

It’s not only the initial calls for service, either: dispatchers may need to provide information on warrants and license plates for officers on scene, while also arranging additional support as needed. They train for three weeks at an academy, and in addition to police codes and the NATO phonetic alphabet, they quickly learn to recognize officers by voice alone.

“I think the main (skill) is you have to be able to multi-task. We have to have compassion and caring, but the biggest deal is multi-tasking because we’re always doing multiple things at one time,” she said. “It’s a lot about team work in there. You’ve got to be a team player in there to accomplish all that and have that good outcome.”

What is a good outcome? That would be “getting people the help that they need and knowing that they got there as quickly as they could.”

Ruiz was understated in her accounting of the job, consistent with the calm and considered tone required of her position. Clovis Police Capt. Roman Romero said it requires “strong people,” and their role in first responders’ operations is recognized April 8-14 this year for National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week.

“They have a difficult job,” Romero wrote in an email. “They receive the first part of the story from people calling the police on what may be the worst day of their life. Sometimes that story is good or bad or exciting or mundane. We ask them, and the public expects them, to manage their fear or anxiety. They hear the worst part of the call and more often than not, don’t know how that story ends.”

Ruiz said she manages that stress with focus at work and spending time with her son at home.

“It can be (stressful), but I think most of us, when we come in that room and we really start to see what we’re doing, we know that we’re going to get further if we can be calm with somebody,” she said. “The main thing is making sure that we get the location of the emergency. It’s hard to stay calm when you’re going through something bad, but (a caller should) know that we have standard questions we have to ask to get the information that we need.”

Ruiz couldn’t immediately recall any especially unique calls she’s fielded over the years, but she said it’s all fair game.

“Any time a dispatcher is like, ‘Oh, we’ve heard everything,’ something new comes in,” she said. “You know, we have received calls about aliens, and of course we send police in to handle that. They don’t happen very often. It’s one of those that kind of catches you by surprise. You never know what’s going on in the phone lines.

In this week of appreciation, police are not recommending the public flood their telephone lines to thank their dispatchers. That would probably be counterintuitive.

“Just remember, the Department is larger than just the marked car and uniformed Officer,” Romero wrote.