(Barbara Eddy-Senior Dispatcher/submitted photo)
After 36 years at the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office, Senior Dispatcher Barbara Eddy will be hanging up her headset.
Her last day on the air at the Genesee County Emergency Dispatch Center will be August 30th.
Eddy’s clear and concise voice has been one that can command an emergency situation and make it seem calm for first responders.
After all, she is the only dispatcher that has the distinction of delivering three babies over the phone line.
“I’ll never forget one of them,” says Eddy.
The dad called and said, “It’s bad weather out and I have to get her to Warsaw Hospital and I know I’m not going to get her there.”
“I helped him through it.”
The fire chief called Eddy later on and said, “I gotta tell ya, thank goodness you were on the phone cause I think the dad was the bigger patient.”
Eddy says she just recently met the healthy baby boy that was born that day. He is a senior this year at Alexander High School.
“It definitely sticks out in my mind right now as I am choosing to remember the positive things.”
Eddy started at the Sheriff’s Office in March of 1981 as a typist.
“I remember I got a brand new Select IBM typewriter and how exciting it was, now I have five screens, a headset and three mice and it is so different.”
Eddy was appointed as a dispatcher in 1990, when they used logs, blotter books, and push button phones.
In 2008, she received the NYS Sheriff’s Association Award for Communicator of the Year.
She was promoted to Senior Dispatcher in 2013.
“The new technology is amazing, there is such a difference.”
Eddy says she has been able to get through whatever type of situation that comes up at the dispatch center because of the help of her co-workers.
“Everyday I walk in here and I know I’m going to be helping someone no matter what it is. I go the extreme of helping a baby not breathing or someone finding their spouse deceased.”
“We are literally the first ones on the scene when we answer the phones.”
Dispatchers work as a team says Eddy.
“During storms its just crazy. We get an hour with a burst and its just hold on everybody here it goes.”
What will be tough after 36 years is getting out of the routine.
“When it comes to a storm I usually have to go to work, now it will be pretty strange, the phone won’t be ringing and I won’t have to go into work.”
Eddy plans on staying home to help her three adult children in taking care of two grandchildren with one more on the way.
She plans to travel with her husband and get back into her volunteer work with the Boy Scouts in Alexander and also helping out the Alexander Fire Department.
Eddy’s advice to those thinking about becoming a dispatcher?
“You have to be able to multi-task, you gotta be able to talk on the phone and answer a police officer on the radio, it is a very fulfilling career.”