Camp 911: Why Making Bracelets and Performing Skits is a Mental Health Exercise

By Special Guest Author

Katy Gilbert

911 Deputy of Operations, Washington State 911 Coordination Office

When we completed our first Camp 911 event, I returned home after nearly a week away, dropped my bags in the entry, and hugged my kiddos.

My husband greeted me and asked, “How did camp go?”

“Great!” I replied. “A bunch of people cried. It was awesome.”

Of course, people crying is not necessarily a good thing (particularly if you are making them cry). Certainly, my husband was confused. However, to borrow the perspective of my well-respected friend, Jim Marshall, crying is sometimes a signal of breaking open, not falling apart. And in this case, that represents the experience of Camp 911.

Camp 911 started as a pipe dream of Kim Lettrick, the Communications Manager for SECOMM, a consolidated center in Southeastern Washington state. She has dedicated most of her adult life to the 9-1-1 industry and over the course of her years of service, watched too many people lose themselves to the high demands of the PSAP. What began as an idea became a plan that was carried out for the first time in September of 2025.

The plan was simple: bring 9-1-1 telecommunicators together and get them outside the PSAP to connect. Give them things they have a hard time getting when they are working in the PSAP environment. Things like time to create art. The opportunity to be outside in nature. The chance to connect with new people who understand what you do. The ability to unplug from the demands of the handy little devices that keep them connected to everything, all the time (including those pesky overtime notifications). Most importantly, we wanted to provide them with an opportunity to choose to do nothing at all.

We often know what we are getting into with a conference, whether we are planning one or attending one. There is certainly something valuable about learning in a group environment and experiencing breakout sessions on any number of topics. However, that wasn’t what we wanted for Camp 911. By making the distinction – that this was not a conference – I have to admit: I didn’t really know what to expect with the event we were actively planning. I wasn’t sure how many people would really want to go. Further, I didn’t know how many PSAPs would want to support this kind of trip. I was fairly terrified that people would walk away thinking, “Why on Earth did I just spend time away from my family to attend fifth grade camp?” Effectively, planning the whole schedule for the event was completely new and we were throwing things at the wall to see what stuck. Our guesses on what people would enjoy and re-energize from were educated – but still guesses.

As people began to arrive, my nerves increased. We gave them their cabin assignments, and they put their things away, returning to the registration desk to wait for instructions. I hadn’t considered how awful telecommunicators tend to be at doing whatever they please in a void of time. They are so persistently short on time that this crowd wasn’t even sure what to do with the luxury. I felt the light panic of wondering if my event was starting to fall apart.

As camp progressed, it became clear that it wasn’t falling apart; it was falling together. We spent mornings enjoying a drop-in breakfast, to allow people to eat when it felt right for them. We spent the early part of the day doing team building activities like creating a team name and making a team flag. We had different blocks of time for activities, which varied from creating different art projects, to hiking, to playing sports like badminton. We enjoyed lunch together. We did a multi-layered relay race called cabin wars, that involved elements like a scavenger hunt and logic challenge. We ensured snacks were available at all hours in a communal space, to account for unique dietary needs. For one of my favorite activities, we provided each team two props (largely, random items collected from my children’s toy bins that weren’t related to each other at all) and made them put together a skit that incorporated both items. The results were fantastic – and hilarious.

However, the most satisfying and meaningful activity was one that came about accidentally. I often check in with my children after a fun trip or outing to see what their favorite part of it was. On our last night, I decided to pose the same question to our campers. The responses they gave embodied what made camp a magical and impactful experience. Some acknowledged that they had found time for themselves after a long stretch of not being able to do so. Some simply enjoyed that they got to be out in nature. Nearly everyone acknowledged that one of their favorite parts of the experience was to connect with new people that understood where they come from and what they do.

It has been the reaction to camp that has stuck with me most as we’ve moved forward. One person teared up at the campfire as she shared that at camp, she felt a sense of belonging and value – things that she’s had a hard time finding at times. Another person sent me a testimonial after camp, sharing that they have been struggling with mental health and camp gave them “what felt like years of missing joy and identity through hiking, art, sport, nature, silence and deep talks.”

As we wrapped up the campfire on our second camp session, one person hugged me and said they thought I might have just changed their life.

It’s hard to quantify camp and explain why investing a handful of days into staying in a rustic cabin and engaging in arts & crafts and skits and other things is a good use of time, especially staff time that has to be arranged and backfilled. But, the more we evaluate the 9-1-1 profession and what it should look like (versus what it does look like), the more convinced I am that we have to explore such opportunities to change the tide of what we expect out of people who do this incredible work. I want people to work in 9-1-1. For me, it is a profession that I have such deep passion for that I can’t imagine ever fully leaving it in the rearview mirror. It is noble to sacrifice holidays and weekends and time with family to help the community. At what point, though, does it become reckless to risk your mental and physical health for that same cause?

As the industry works to embrace well-being and taking care of ourselves first (at least sometimes), it is experiences like Camp 911 that I imagine will be vital in keeping people in 9-1-1 and helping them exit gracefully in a physically and emotionally positive space.

To quote one of our attendees, Sarah Watkins, (telecommunicator at Seattle CARE, a law enforcement PSAP in the city of Seattle) who truly said it best: “Programs such as this heal and build better telecommunicators. They strengthen bonds both within our department and across the state. Camp 911 is a time and a place which is indispensable to our cause as first-responders.”

About the Author:

Katy Gilbert is the Deputy of Operations for the State 911 Coordination Office in Washington State. She began her career in 2011 as a telecommunicator in a consolidated PSAP just outside Seattle, Washington. She began supervising in 2014 and continued to do so until moving to the State 911 Coordination Office in August 2023. Since then, she has spent time exploring and supporting what matters to her most: helping 9-1-1 telecommunicators and trying to help 9-1-1 become an even better career to work in. She has done this through working to set up a statewide peer support system in Washington State, setting up Camp 911, and her favorite part - connecting with 9-1-1 telecommunicators whenever she can. Outside of work, she is a happily married mother of four fantastic children. She also enjoys creating stained glass and volunteering to support the development of 9-1-1 systems outside the US in her bits of free time.

If you’d like to set up a Camp 911 experience in your state and would like to know more, please feel free to reach out to the author via email: katy.gilbert@mil.wa.gov.