For this year’s National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, we asked former 911 dispatchers and telecommunicators, now working across Axon, Prepared and Carbyne, to reflect on their time in emergency services. These are their stories.

The Weight Still Carried

By Cassie Fierro, Axon Sr. Manager of Program Management and former 911 Dispatch Supervisor

As National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week approaches, I've been reflecting on what it means to wear the headset. There’s a weight to the headset that never really leaves you. The thing is, the headset itself only weighs a few ounces. Plastic, wire… something you could hold in the palm of your hand. But the moment you put it on, you understand… that’s not the weight anyone is talking about.

Even after you take it off for the last time… it stays. It’s in the way your chest tightens at the sound of an open mic. In the instinct to listen a little closer when someone says, “I need help.” In the quiet understanding of just how fast everything can change.

For 13 years, I wore the headset. And even now, I can still feel it. I remember the chaos. Voices layered over sirens, radios stepping on each other, seconds stretching longer than they should. I remember the fear in the whispers, the agony in the screams, and the stillness in the silence. I remember what it felt like to be the steady voice in someone else’s worst moment. And I remember the silence. The calls that ended without answers. The stories that never had closure. The weight you carry anyway. Because that’s what telecommunicators do. They carry it.

They show up, shift after shift, holding space for people they’ve never met… on days they may not feel whole themselves. They make impossible decisions in seconds. They become the calm, even when everything around them is anything but.

They are the first first responders. No lights. No sirens. No scene to stand on. Just a voice and the responsibility that comes with it.

Lives are saved because of that voice. Officers find their way back because of it. Fires are fought, breaths are guided, and in some moments… goodbyes are not faced alone. You may not see them. But you feel their impact in every outcome.

I may not wear the headset anymore, but I will always carry what it meant. This week, and every week, we honor those who still do. To the voices behind the line, You are heard. You are needed. You are never forgotten.

The First Voice They Hear

By Justin Henning, Prepared Sr. Engagement Manager, Dispatch Veteran with 20+ years of experience

I used to sit behind a headset, a keyboard, and a wall of screens, but what I really held was the first thread of someone’s worst day.

As a 911 telecommunicator, you learn quickly that calm is a skill, not a feeling. Your voice becomes steady even when your chest tightens, even when the caller on the other end is screaming, whispering, or saying nothing at all. You listen for everything — the words, the pauses, the background noise, the fear.

During my time in dispatch, I experienced some of life’s greatest highs and some of the worst lows. There were moments of relief and even quiet triumph — when a life was saved, when a caller found safety, when help arrived just in time. But there were also calls that stayed with me, the kind that don’t fade when the shift ends. The kind that remind you just how fragile things can be.

During National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, I don’t just remember the calls—I remember the weight of them. The mother counting breaths with me while we waited for EMS. The caller who stayed on the line long after help arrived, just to hear another human voice. The moments where seconds felt like hours, and the ones where everything moved so fast you didn’t feel it until later.

What people don’t always see is what happens after you hang up. The silence. The deep breath before the next call drops in. The way you carry pieces of strangers with you — into your drive home, into your sleep, into your life. But there’s pride in that weight, too. Pride in being the first calm in chaos. The unseen first responder. The voice that says, “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Even now, after stepping away, I still hear the tones sometimes. Still think in questions: “Where is your emergency?” It never really leaves you, and maybe that’s because it was never just a job. It was a promise to show up, no matter what came through the line.

To those who paved the way before me, thank you for building something strong enough for the rest of us to stand on. To the ones holding the line right now, your strength doesn’t go unnoticed, even when it feels like it does. And to those who will one day put on the headset, know that this is one of the greatest callings there is.

Both Sides of the Radio

By Stephen Mette, Prepared Sr. Product Advocate II, former 911 Operations Manager and Acting Chief of Police

I’ve been on both sides of the radio.

But it was when I stepped into a leadership role, managing the dispatchers and call takers themselves, that something really shifted for me.

Watching dispatchers and call takers work, up close, day after day, you see things that don’t show up in any after-action report. You see the sheer volume of decisions they’re making in real time. You see them navigating tools that were never designed with them in mind. You see the frustration of fighting a system while simultaneously trying to hold someone else’s world together. And you see what that costs them, not just at the end of a shift, but over time.

The technology has evolved, but the burden hasn’t gotten lighter. If anything, it’s heavier. More data, more complexity, more layered onto the same people who are already carrying the weight of every call that comes in. For all the advancement in public safety technology, almost none of it has been built to genuinely reduce the strain on the people doing the work.

That reality is exactly why where I am right now means so much to me. Getting to work on something that can actually change that, not just improve how help is delivered, but meaningfully reduce the stress and cognitive load on the people delivering it, that’s the kind of work that doesn’t feel like work. It feels like a responsibility.

The Call That Never Leaves You

By Andrea King, ENP, Director of Public Safety at Carbyne, former 911 Communications Supervisor and Trainer with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department

It was a December night on the Las Vegas Strip. Christmas was days away, holiday staffing was in effect, and the PSAP was moving at full speed. I was away from my radio trainee, working through a queue of calls, when a hotel security officer came on the line. Multiple fatalities outside. I remember the disbelief I felt as I routed that call, and then suddenly, everything accelerated.

That call was over a decade ago. I still think about it. Not because it broke me. But because that’s what this job does to you—it lives in you. The weight of what telecommunicators carry doesn’t clock out at the end of a shift. It doesn’t disappear when the headset comes off. It becomes part of who you are.

This week is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week. And I want to take a moment, not to celebrate in the abstract, but to speak directly to the people still sitting in those seats.

I grew up in 911. From the very first call I took, I knew I was called to this work. For 14 years, I wore the headset proudly at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, in the community where my family and I still live. I worked the floor, I supervised, and I trained. I took calls I will carry for the rest of my life. Calls that reminded me, again and again, that the person on the other end of that line was depending on me to hold it together so they didn’t have to.

What nobody talked about enough (at least not when I was coming up) was how hard it is to hold it together. How isolating it can feel when the shift ends and the world outside has no idea what just happened in your center. How easy it is to start questioning whether you’re doing enough, whether you’re good enough, whether the weight you feel is weakness or simply what it means to care deeply about your work.

I wrote about Imposter Syndrome a few years back, and the response I got told me everything I needed to know: we don’t talk about this stuff nearly enough. So let me say it plainly, to every dispatcher working a 12-hour overnight this week:

The weight you feel is not a sign that you don’t belong there. It’s proof of how much you do.

The calls that stay with you—the ones you replay, the ones that catch you off guard months later—those aren’t evidence of failure. They’re evidence of presence. Of a human being who showed up, fully, for someone else’s worst moment. That is not a small thing. That is everything.

I made one of the hardest decisions of my life when I left the center. Four years ago, I stepped away from a place I had called home for 14 years. I wasn’t sure I was making the right choice. I wasn’t sure who I was outside that role. And if I’m honest, it took me a long time to stop feeling like I had walked away from something sacred. What I’ve learned since then is that the work doesn’t end when you leave the console. For me, it evolved.

Today, I get to advocate for the people still doing what I did. They’re the professionals who are the first voice in someone’s most desperate moment, the ones who coordinate the response before the responders even arrive. The ones who never get the full story, who rarely hear how it ended, who move on to the next call because there’s always a next call. I carry that with me every single day. And it’s why weeks like this one matter.

But I also want to be honest about what NPSTW can sometimes feel like from inside the center: a catered lunch and a banner on the wall that disappears by Friday. I say that not to diminish the gestures, but to push us as an industry to go further.

Recognition that lasts looks like advocacy. It looks like funding. It looks like mental health resources that are actually accessible and actually used without stigma. It looks like leadership that checks in on its people not just during appreciation week, but on the random Tuesday when someone is quietly struggling. It looks like organizations (NENA, APCO, 911der Women, and others) doing the work year-round to ensure that telecommunicators are seen, supported, and heard at every level.

This profession saved me in ways I am still discovering. And I believe, with everything I have, that the people in it deserve far more than we currently give them.

So this week, if you are in that chair, if you are pulling a holiday shift or an overnight, if you are a new call-taker still finding your footing or a veteran supervisor who has seen more than anyone should. I want you to know something. You are not just a dispatcher. You are the calm in someone else’s chaos. You are the voice that says, “I’m here!” when everything else has fallen apart. You are the first link in a chain that saves lives every single day.

And the call that stays with you? The one you still think about? That’s not a burden. That’s the mark of someone who answered when it mattered most.

Thank you for answering the call. Every single time.