Spill the Sweet Tea Sis

I am going lay on you some things I have learned over the last 7 1/2 years as a 911 Dispatcher.

People call you for help. And then they LIE to you. This came as a big surprise to me when I first started dispatching. You CALLED me, why are you lying? I am just trying to help YOU. However, my bullshit radar is precisely tuned, I can smell hinky from a mile away.

When someone ‘forgets’ their name and birthday and you’re playing dispatch detective, they have given you one piece of the puzzle, they can’t think of date of birth and a fake name, one of the pieces will be them and another is probably a sibling or someone they know well. *** PSA lying is like waving a red flag in front of a bull or a juicy bone in front of a junkyard dog, the whole dispatch team is now game on and very rarely do you go unidentified. And bless those officers ’17, I am looking at you, that tell someone, ‘when dispatch figures out who you are, and they will, I will come back and charge you with GFI (giving false info). We did and he did too.

People will call 911 because someone is walking their dog twice a day during covid lockdown or because they heard a firework go off. People will call the business line and ask you how you are doing and talk about the weather and then casually mention that they are having chest and jaw pain or they have cut their leg mostly off with a rusty chainsaw. The best thing about being a dispatcher is everyday is different, the not so best thing is you don’t know when you’re going to get ‘that call’ or ‘that radio traffic’.

After you hear the words ‘one at gunpoint’, ‘one at taserpoint’ or ‘one running’ you get a cardio workout equivalent to running a race. After you hear the words ‘shots fired’ your heart stops. Time stops. But the job doesn’t stop. You fall back on all the training you hoped you’d never need and you make the calls, send the medics, and 18 minutes until you get an official ‘all officers are code 4’ takes three years off your life and ages you decades. When I started this job I only wanted everyone to come home from every shift I did and I am thankful that has been case.

I have learned things I didn’t want to know, I have sympathy dry heaved with someone who was vomiting who thought I was mocking them. I have been instructed that if someone asks you if it is a stupid question, asking them “do you think it is a stupid question?” might be construed as condescending. I have danced the line with an aggressive caller, matching wit up to the point when I knew I didn’t want to sit in Paul and the Chief’s office having the call played out loud for me. I have cried, laughed, high five’d myself, been proud of the job we’ve done and wished I’d handled somethings differently.

This job changes you, not all for the better but not all for the worst. I am cynical and skeptical but that will keep me from buying gift cards in retirement to avoid being arrested for missing jury duty. I am sarcastic and a smart ass but that is a healthy dark coping mechanism that has kept me sane through rough times. I am still empathetic, I will continue to want to help people. I have learned I am better at training someone than I thought I would be, I have more patience and kindness that I hope rubs off on my trainees and makes them more equipped for a tough job.

To my officers, I always wanted you to be safe, getting you home to your families meant everything to me. The teeny tiny threats I may have made, the eye rolls or the borderline snark you may have thought you heard on the radio, came from a place of sarcasm and fondness.

To my dispatchers, much like family, we might occasionally get on each others nerves but I love how if you messed with one of us you got the whole trailer park. We got that from our leader, he might get in a good dig, but woe on anyone who thought coming after one of us was a solid plan.

To admin and all the staff that keep the PD running. May there be no microwave fires disrupting your day, may you not get blind transferred a fun call, and may no one park in your spot.

There are many things I will miss, the people I worked with being the top of that list. There are things I will not miss at all, I’m looking at your driving complaints… ***PSA if you call in a driving complaint, and it involves merging, don’t call 911. They almost ran you into the center lane and/or sidewalk because it is at least 50% possible that you decided it was a birthright, not a lane.

Save 911 for the emergencies, look up your non emergency number and program it in your phone. The first question a 911 Dispatcher is always going to ask you is what is the address of your emergency, so have that first. They aren’t moving on until they get it. We are not the hurt feelings police, it is actually not illegal that they flipped you off or cursed. And remember, if you call 911 to report you hear fireworks and/or you use the phrase “I know what gunshots sound like”, Santa drowns a baby reindeer.

Enjoy your sweet tea. Kerri

I am definitely a hypochondriac. Or at least a WebMD, google expert. I have diagnosed myself with many a thing but no one was more surprised than me 10 years ago to be told I had renal cell carcinoma. When I presented my sister with my I told you so with a great flourish, she dryly quipped “you were bound to be right ONE of the times you were overly dramatic”. Touché.

Today I am ten years no evidence of disease. So in very typical me fashion allow me to dramatically overstate the obvious.

1. None of us get out of this roller coaster alive. What we make of the ride is all we have. So drink the froo froo coffee drink, buy the REALLY NICE shoes, have the ice cream for dinner (if you’re not lactose intolerant like they say I am).
2. Post the pictures of your fur babies, plates of pasta, offspring, first blossom of spring and random selfie. It’s fun to join you in celebration and when I say you’re in my thoughts and prayers when you post the challenges you’re facing, I promise you’re in both.
3. If someone thinks you’re crazy for quitting the job, moving across the country or cutting bangs, let them. If I have learned ANYTHING in my 7.5 years (yes Paul I count them ALL), everyone is some degree of crazy. Don’t try and hide it, embrace it, we’re all a little mad here.
4. Don’t wait until you move to spruce up your home, get the touch up paint and paint the door where the dog scratched it, buy the pretty rug, wash the windows, plant the flowers, get a new duvet cover. Why do we wait until someone else will see it? We see it everyday, make it shine.
5. Get rid of sh*t you don’t need. This comes from my little hoarding heart, take a pic, relive the memory, but you don’t have to keep everything. As we have packed to move with an estimate of 2800 cubic feet of stuff we are moving across the country, if you look at the shirt and think it’s too _________ and you don’t want to put it on RIGHT NOW, donate it. We have too much stuff and it is a burden. An expensive burden. And a mental burden.

I am sure I have more sage and savvy advice but I am going to say this. In the next week, everything changes for our herd. And there is sadness for what is still in the PNW that lives in our hearts and it shares space with excitement for what it is to come.

Adventure is out there. ~ Kerri

For years Kambi and I have talked about starting a blog and more recently a podcast. We are fun, witty, sarcastic and have a lot to say. Does that translate into something people want to read or hear? We are going to find out! We will use this blog to share the Sweet Tea with y’all.

I’m Kerri, I am the “older” sister. I am a 911 Dispatcher, collector of all the critters and I have a need to see what is around the next corner. I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for all of my life, not counting a 3 year stay in Northern California. For the last 10 years we have called the Oregon Coast home. We have loved our time here but it is time for a new herd adventure.

We have been a herd since Mike and I remarried back in 2010 and 10 of us went on our honeymoon cruise to Alaska. In 2011 we lost our son, Kameron Chase in 2011 and Mike and I moved to Northern California to live with my younger sister, Kambra.

Three years later we all moved north to the Oregon Coast. It is a beautiful area that we had vacationed in for years. We have spent the last 10 years exploring the coast line, from Gold Beach to Astoria. It is a very lovely place to live and we will always remember our time here.

In September, Mike and I flew out to Tennessee with the anticipation that was where we would find a new herd home. We flew into Nashville, rented a car and drove up into Kentucky which was supposed to be a for a day or two before circling back down into Tennessee and looking for a new home. Instead, we fell in love with Kentucky, contacted a real estate agent and started the process of finding our new place to call home.

Fast forward through a lot of false starts, disappointments and perseverance when giving up seemed like the only option and we are now one week away from ending our jobs here and two weeks from when the moving truck arrives to load all our world possessions to begin the 2500 mile trek to Kentucky.

Join us as we journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast. Adventure is out there!