Unsung Hero: Becky Smetana answers the call as 911 dispatcher
Dec. 22—Before a police officer hears anything, Becky Smetana knows about it first.
As a 911 dispatcher for more than 20 years, Smetana has been the "first first responder" for all of Laramie County's emergency services. It took years to learn how to cope with the toll her consistently high-stress job takes on her mental health, she said.
But learning to cope with life's challenges was something she had to confront from a young age, and helped shape her approach to her life and work.
"My dad passed away when I was 18 years old," she said. "I think I learned very young that things can change very, very quickly. I remember, it was like the day after, I pulled into the gas station (and thought), 'All of these people's lives, nobody's is different, and mine is drastically different.'
"So, I try to remember that, sometimes, these people are having the worst time. They're clearly in their worst moment. What they don't need is for me to judge that or be mean about it. All they need is somebody to be empathetic and give them the help that they need."
When Smetana first started as a dispatcher in 2000, dispatch centers for emergencies were separate. In 2006, she saw the merger of several different response centers into the Laramie County Combined Communications Center, which takes up much of the Cheyenne Public Safety Center's third floor. This streamlined emergency responses dramatically, she said, as the majority of the county's emergency calls are now handled from there.
Smetana and her colleagues have developed a sense of humor on the job. In the communications center, where all 911 calls (except for at F.E. Warren Air Force Base) are received, two large projection screens play a looping slideshow of Christmas memes.
The staff working the day shift when the Wyoming Tribune Eagle met Smetana all had coordinated Christmas outfits, as well. Each of them had put on a hair band with antlers. Then, they placed plastic eyes on the back of their heads, tied their hair up in a bun and put a red ball in the middle. From the back, they all looked like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.
But when the time comes to answer a call, Smetana and her colleagues know when to be serious. The art of switching between levity and candor takes time.
Smetana said part of being able to handle the job, and compartmentalize, is to address the toll a job in emergency response can take on someone's mental health. To do that, in recent years the communications center has started a peer support group, spearheaded by Smetana and her boss, center Director Amber Young.
"(When I started) we didn't really talk about any of those things," Smetana said. "If anything, that dark humor is more how we dealt with it, which, you know, is a way of dealing with it, but it still doesn't deal with those emotions. ... It's almost like caregiving. ... It's a vicarious trauma. But you still are carrying that with you. The attitude toward mental health and toward dealing with those things has changed immensely, which is wonderful."
"Since I've been here, mental health has been huge to me," Young said. "Just trying to keep them human and not becoming jaded can be a challenge. Because, you know, people are calling us in the worst moments, and a lot of times are blaming us for their life choices. It can make you a little cynical."
Smetana was nominated for the WTE Unsung Heroes Award by her sister-in-law, Helen Tapia. Tapia said that people like Smetana are often underappreciated for their behind-the-scenes role in emergency management.
"It takes a very strong person, I feel like, to deal with a lot of stuff that they hear firsthand," Tapia said. "I've heard some stories over the years, and it's just incredibly heartbreaking, the stuff that they take on firsthand.
"They really are the first first responders."
Like many of her peers, Smetana's long career as a dispatcher started by accident. At a young age, she took a job as a substitute teacher at Cheyenne's East High School and quickly realized that she didn't want to work there. In 2000, she stumbled on her calling.
"I was kind of floundering around, and my stepdad was a Cheyenne PD officer," she said. "He said, 'Why don't you take the dispatch test.' So I took the dispatch test, and I did well on it, and I kind of didn't know what else to do. I kind of fell into it, which I think a lot of people do."
Even 23 years later, she still feels touched by the way her job can make an impact on people's lives. Like, in one instance, where she helped a man deliver CPR to his brother through the phone.
"It was probably, I don't know, 10 o'clock at night, real quiet," she said. "I answered the phone ... By now I can tell when something is really ... I mean, this guy was frantic. His brother was choking, and while he was on (the phone), he went unconscious. He got him on the ground, and he was doing belly thrusts, and it took a good minute, but I heard him gasp, and it was not a clean gasp — he was still struggling, but breathing.
"That was the first in all these years, that was the first for me. It was just like, I heard that those people saved his life."
Smetana will be eligible to retire from her dispatcher position in October. By then, she'll have been a dispatcher for 24 years.
"I actually am going to retire for a while and travel with my boyfriend," she said.
While she's seen a lot change in her time as a dispatcher in the capital city, she said that she would still like to see more progress.
"I think I have a little bit more of a liberal heart," she said. "So, I wish it was a bit more progressive, for sure. ... I mean that in a social sense, but as much in an emergency preparedness sense, as well. Our population is growing, and we need to be ready for that."
She said she's at peace leaving the job, especially because of the strides the communications center has made to address mental health. But she's still worried about staffing challenges at the center. Young said her department is currently around 50% staffed.
"I can tell you that it's a nationwide problem because last year the Association of Public Communications Officials had their first-ever '911 Staffing Crisis Summit' in Washington, D.C.," Young said. "So, it's gotten so bad, nationwide, that they're actually getting states together and to try and come up with a plan. ... We have a $5,000 hiring bonus right now. That does bring in some interesting riff-raff. We'll take the riff-raff if we can find that diamond in the rough. It really does take a special, special person to do this job."
Young said that Smetana is one of those special people.
"She's always going to have a special place in my heart just for seeing me as a human being," she added. "And that's just the kind of person she is, she's humble. She's one of the best call takers I've ever worked with. ... I come from a very, very large center, and that's, kind of, high praise."
Samir Knox is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's criminal justice and public safety reporter. He can be reached by email at sknox@wyomingnews.com or by phone at 307-633-3152. Follow him on Twitter at @bySamirKnox.
