BENTONVILLE — Dispatchers are a deputy's lifeline, Sheriff Keith Ferguson said.
"They send us out on calls," Ferguson said. "They are the ones who get calls first. They get the information and they letus know what we're dealing with before we get there. They cover our backs, is what it is."
Benton County Sheriff's Office deputies, firefighters and others who rely on the county's Central Communicationsoperation for that lifeline may notice a familiar voice missing; Vicki Ash retired from the post she's occupied at CenCom for the past 20 years. Her last day on the job was Friday.
When she began working for the county in January of 1991, the dispatch center was crammed into one small room in the building that now houses the county's Juvenile Detention Center. In 1991, it was the county jail and was separated from the Benton County Courthouse by a narrow alleyway, Ash said.
"It was just a tiny little room, not much bigger than our breakroom is now," Ash said. "There was one boommike for the operators. We had to hand-write our logs and at the end of the day we had to type them up. There were days when we had one operator and days when we had two."
Ash said the communications center was so low on the priority list, dispatchers had no restroom or breakroom available, having to use the jail restroom or cross the alley to the courthouse. At times, a trip to the courthouse could be a challenge, she said.
"At night, if we wanted a snack or something, we'd have to go across to the courthouse and sometimes it was scary," she said. "You'd hearthings creaking and groaning when there was nobody in there."
Ash, 59, said she began working in law enforcement dispatch in Oklahoma, working for a county sheriff's office and a small police department. She said police department dispatchers were also commissioned officers who had to go out on patrol. When she moved to Northwest Arkansas and took a job as a dispatcher with Benton County, it almost drove her out of law enforcement.
"There were people talking in the back of the room and several deputies talking on the radio all at the same time," she said. "Then youhad to answer calls. I was just about to burst into tears and say, 'I can't do this.' Then I said, 'Yes, I can,' and I didn't let things get to me. If you did, you'd never make it. You wouldn't even last a day."
Ash said she learned to accept the stress and strains of the job, then to let them go. She said the rewards she got from helping people outweighed the negatives of the job and the poor working conditions.
"We would go to work every day and see the wires dangling from the outlets," she said. "There were bugs and spiders coming out of the ceiling. One time someone said there was a snake, but I never saw it. I never thought we'd be in a building like this one."
Ash said while she keeps most of her work separate from her personal life and encourages others who work with her to do the same, there are things that still weigh on the mind.
Ash said her most stressful day on the job came shortly after the county activated its 911 system. She said there were two dispatchers working and they would trade off working 911 calls for a time, then handling fire calls.
"There was this one call," Ash said. "A mother was on the phone and she was crying. She had found her baby face down in a pool of green water. The little girl was 3 or 4 years old. It has stuck in my mind ever since."
Ash gave the county creditfor providing a proper work space for the communications center and praised Matt Garrity and Josh Billis, two of her supervisors, for "working their butts off to see we had everything we needed."
Billis, the county's emergency communications coordinator, said it's exceptionally rare for someone to spend 20 years working in a public safety dispatch center.
"The national average is about seven years before they burn out and have to move on," Billis said.
Ash said she thought she reached the burnout point once in her career. She actually left her job with the county and went to work as a court clerk in Gravette.
"Oh, yes," Ash said when asked about burnout. "I was gone for a week. I thought I had to get out of here."
Ash said she found she missed the work and her friends and managed to get her old job back. Billis said he hasn't been able to persuade her to change her mind again.
"Vicki has been a rock for CenCom," Billis said. "I can't tell you how important Vicki has been to the county. There are no words to express it."
Ash said she plans to keep working, but on the farmshe and her husband, Lonnie, have near Gravette.
"We have dogs, a horse, chickens, everything you need," she said.
Marshal Watson, the county's public safety administrator, said Ash will be difficult to replace, saying it takes a special set of skills and a special sort of person to do the work she has done at a high level for two decades.
"It's very seldom that we get to see someone retire in this field," Watson said. "She is an exceptional person and this is an exceptional circumstance. Not everyone can flourish in that environment."
News, Pages 2 on 02/02/2011