ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME CALLS JUST PART OF JOB FOR 911 OPERATORS

For 911 operator Janice Ham, the worst emergency call she ever received had her daughter on the other line.

"I had to take the call when they found my mother," Ham said. Ham said that her daughter had gone to visit her grandmother and found her dead. Her daughter called 911 and Ham answered.

"You never know if it's going to be someone you love," she said. "It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime calls."

But for Ham, and the others in the communications department at the Cape Girardeau Police Department, it's a part of the job.

The department of 10 gets dozens of calls every day, with all sorts of emergencies, said police Sgt. Carl Kinnison. There is someone in the Cape Girardeau office 24-hours a day, seven days a week, he said. The Cape Girardeau office receives calls from the city. Emergency 9-1-1 calls from Jackson go to the Jackson and county calls go to the sheriff's department, Kinnison said.

"It's a lot of stress," Ham said, before rattling off a list of calls she remembers that includes a fireman's suicide, murders, armed robbers, and other grisly scenes.

"But it's gratifying when you feel like you've helped someone," Ham said. She cites the time a 4-year-old girl called and said she woke up to find her mother was not there. Ham sent over a police officer, who found that the girl's mother had just been in the shower.

"It's good to help people like that," Ham said.

Cheryl Stoffregen has been a 911 operator for two years and said it is overwhelming at first.

"It's just the volume of things you have to do," she said. She said those in communications have to balance conversations with emergency personnel and those on the phone at the same time.

Kim Amelunke, communications supervisor, said some of the hardest calls are from children whose parents are having a domestic dispute.

"You get some poor kid in the back room crying that his daddy's hit mommy," Amelunke said. "That's hard to hear."

In their profession, there is no such thing as a typical day, Amelunke said. Calls come from everybody from all walks of life, she said.

While calls are for "in-progress events for which an immediate response is needed," Amelunke said that a lot of calls are misdirected.

People call when their car has been broken into or when they just don't know the business number of the police department. Those are not things that require immediate responses.

After 13 years of answering 911 calls, Amelunke said she hasn't become callous like one might expect.

"You can't; I think you become better able to handle the situation," she said. "But that doesn't mean that some days we don't still leave at the end of a shift upset about a call. But you can't let your emotions get in the way of your job."

Patience is a pre-requisite for the job, she said, and 9-1-1 operators shouldn't get frustrated with callers. These people are upset and may not be thinking clearly.

If callers start rambling, you've got to take over the conversation to get the answers you need, she said.

Amelunke said it's a responsibility she doesn't take lightly.

"You're their lifeline until that fireman gets there, police. They're hanging on to you. As long as they can talk to you, they're not alone," she said.

Said Amelunke: "You can't take it lightly, not when you care about people. That's what we're there for, to care."