From Darkness to Serving: Why I Became a Dispatcher

By Special Guest Writer

Sarah O'Brien, EMT

Emergency Medical Dispatcher

Reader Caution: this article is a story that shares struggle with suicide. If you have been personally touched by suicide, have yet to heal, or know you are easily triggered, please stay attuned to what you are thinking and how you are feeling. Seek professional support as needed by calling the National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 9-8-8 or text "BLUE" to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

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I am an Emergency Medical Dispatcher for a private ambulance company in Massachusetts. I am 34 and a mom to four wild boys, all under 11-years-old. That is the easy way to introduce myself, but deeper than that, I am a lot more. I want to share my story, the real and raw life story of why I became a dispatcher. It is a messy and sometimes hard story to tell, but I am honored to share, because I know I am not the only one who has lived a similar life. Meet me.

I am the third child out of four, and I was born in California. My parents were pastors of a church that was a part of a greater cult. However, the cult part was something I did not realize until much later in life. Growing up, I was part of the children who should be seen and not heard, and any slight misstep created chaos. As a child, you don’t know any difference, though. I quickly learned that to be loved, I had to behave and do good; if I did anything out of line, love would be withheld, and I would be disciplined. As I got older, the discipline became more emotional and verbal. It is much easier to tell a 7-year-old that their actions will make them go to hell than it is to beat them, especially after you show them videos and movies about people burning in hell for eternity. So, I had a very real fear of misbehaving because what child wants to go to hell? Copy/paste this action and reaction x 1000, and I learned quickly to read the room and try to anticipate the problems before they occurred. I would squash my own needs to make sure that my parents never felt inconvenient by my existence.

Fast forward my life to my teenage years when my parents became missionaries to India. Imagine never leaving the USA to then being picked up and moved to India as a 16-year-old. Culture shock is an understatement. While in India, the real-world exposure was harsh and traumatic. My family and I were victims of a terrorist attack near where we lived, and that caused a spiral of events. After the terrorist attack, we had to always be on high alert. My father thought his life was too important to be put in danger. Every day we went to the car, he had my little sister and I search the car for bombs before he got in it. While this probably sounds so far-fetched that it isn’t true, unfortunately, it did happen, sometimes several times a day. But like anything, you become numb to the crazy and the trauma. There were several times I clearly remember crawling under the car and joking with my little sister that I hoped the terrorist had thought to put a blinking light on the bomb, because I had no idea what I was looking for. Don’t worry, though, my father was safe and sound across the parking lot until we gave him the all clear. Crazy, right? This was one of many crazy events while we lived there but after 1.5 years I was done.

After the terrorist attack, I couldn’t wait to get out. I moved back to America at 17-and-half and was quickly launched into the real world. From as far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to help people. I applied to several different places and was picked up by a private ambulance company in Arizona. I worked as an Emergency Medical Dispatcher and immediately fell in love with the job and the public safety field in general. Each call that I was able to provide comfort and help the callers healed a tiny part of me that never received the same help. I wanted to do more, so I obtained my Emergency Medical Technician certification and worked in the field as an EMT and stayed in dispatch to work in both positions. Working in the EMS field fulfilled a lot of needs I had to help and be needed. However, it was a whole new level of culture shock. While growing up, I was exposed to lots of real-world problems and trauma; however, I was also very sheltered due to living in a cult lifestyle. Up until I moved out on my own, I was never allowed to watch TV, listen to outside music, or be around people who were not from our church. Imagine a fresh, young, single teenager, now barely an adult, living in a city all by herself with no family, and working in the EMS field as her first real job. It was a wild and very messy learning experience. Most definitely something I would never wish on my children.

As I continued to work in the public safety field, my life changed. I met my now ex-husband, got married very young, and immediately started a family. This eliminated the field work for me, so I threw my entire heart into the dispatch field. I switched to a regional center and fell in love with law enforcement dispatch. I made it my absolute passion and mission to be the best I could be so that everyone went home safe every day. As my career in dispatch continued, the hard calls and long shifts added up until one day I took a very rough 11-year-old hanging call. That call broke me. I would like to say it shouldn’t have because it wasn’t my emergency, like all the things I used to tell my trainees, but none of that mattered. I couldn’t move on. The mom's voice still echoes in my head as I type this. After that call, I realized that while I loved the field and deeply loved helping people, I needed to find a way to manage the buildup of traumatic calls and events that were constantly happening. I worked hard and became a certified Peer Support Member and started working with the local Peer Support Group. This helped manage some of the stress, so I was able to keep going.

Fast forward 5 more years at the Regional Dispatch Center, and I moved over to a Sheriff’s Office where I eventually was promoted to Center Supervisor, running the whole show. I don’t know if you have ever seen the meme of the person with wide eyes who seems shocked that they have accidentally made themselves too important. Well, insert that meme here. I loved my job. It was my deep passion and personal mission to run my center efficiently, treating my employees with grace, consistency, and compassion because those were never shown to me earlier in my career. I believe I succeeded. However, there were numerous, very traumatic events during my time at the Sheriff’s Office, including three separate line-of-duty deaths. This increased struggle with managing my mental health. I have always been, contrary to all the advice I have received, a “shove it deep and keep moving” type of person. It was how I was able to function. But what happens when you can’t shove it anymore? I will tell you from first-hand experience that it gets very messy.

In January of 2023, I was at work when I received a call from my little sister stating my mom had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Ever since moving away from my parents and separating from the cult, I had little to no contact with my father, but I still loved my sweet mom deeply, and this news was the start of a very rough year. After a very short and rough battle, my mom passed away in February of 2023. My little sister and I were there when she died and had to do the post-death cleanup, which was extremely difficult and started a downward spiral for me. Shortly after that, my close friend and Sergeant died suddenly. I was the Supervisor and dispatcher on duty at the time. It crushed me and shattered the little bit of togetherness I had left. Outwardly, I worked with all my might to keep my center running. Shifts were covered and I checked in on everyone's mental health. I found it was distracting to help other people, so I didn’t have to worry about my sadness. And it made me feel like I had a purpose because I was helping my people. It should be mentioned, I continued to grow my knowledge in first-responder mental health throughout my career. I became certified in Critical Incident Stress Management, Mental Health First Aid, Individual Crisis Management, and a slew of other certifications. I cared, and still do, so deeply about no one feeling like they were drowning in the hard and sadness, but I was guilty of neglecting myself to take care of everyone else.

As time passed, the buildup of stress, trauma, and sadness became unbearable. In June of 2023, I was at a conference, and all the things that I had been pushing down and ignoring came bubbling up very suddenly. Before this, I always prided myself on being strong, and I used to internally judge people who died by suicide. I swore I would never have those thoughts, and I would never do anything. Well alone in the hotel room, all I could think about was my mom and my friend and all the calls that went wrong because of me. My mind spiraled and kept saying it was my fault and that I needed to save my friends and people from myself. I told myself my boys would be better without me and that I was not needed. I had a gun next to me. I took it out of its case and held it, with the thoughts continuing to spiral. I had never felt so very alone and so dark. It was when I was holding the gun that my friend sent me a random text. It was nothing encouraging or timely, but they needed some advice about something. Being the people-pleaser I am, I immediately replied and helped them. This pulled me from my spiral temporarily, which was enough time for me to think about what I was about to do. It terrified me, and I put the gun across the hotel room in my suitcase. I never slept that night, and all I could think about was what I almost did. I never told anyone what happened that night because I felt embarrassed and weak.

The events that happened to me at the conference stayed fresh in my brain for a long time, and the thoughts, although not as stark, were always there for the next several months. On top of this, I went through a divorce and lost everything I had worked so hard for. So, as a single mom of four wild boys, I ended 2023 navigating a very different life than the one that I started the year with. The stark difference was that I now had a reason to continue to push through the hard. My four boys, while sometimes exhausting, are my life. I am all they have, and I would never leave them. This helped me pull myself out of the deep.

The dispatching field is wild and crazy and so addicting. I truly loved my job as a dispatcher with every ounce of my being. The build-up of traumatic calls and hard moments is so often overlooked though, and burnout is so very real. As I worked to navigate life as a single mom and still run a communications center, the burnout took its toll. I transitioned out of public safety for a job in the private sector, working remotely so that I could be with my boys more. Leaving the public safety field was much harder than I thought. The reason I became a dispatcher was to help those who couldn’t help themselves… like when I was a child and no one helped me, or all the times I wished someone would help take my hard and sad… I was able to help other people during their hard and sad as a dispatcher. That was so deeply satisfying and healing for me. So, once I no longer had that, I had to do a lot of soul searching and healing. I was in the public safety and communications field for 15 years, and the layers of messiness that come with that many years are a little wild sometimes. I have grown a lot over the last year of my life, and working in the private sector was healing in a way because it allowed me to take a breath and not have the continuous reintroduction to trauma daily. However, I have not been able to feel the same love and satisfaction for my career that I felt as a dispatcher. I have a deep-rooted need within me to help people, and I feel in my soul that I have gone through everything in my life so that I can help other people not go through the same thing. I don’t know if that sounds crazy, but I firmly believe that everything we go through in our lives makes us who we are. While I wish so badly that some of the hard and sad never happened, without them, I would not be where I am today.

I just recently accepted a job and am now going back to a private ambulance company in Massachusetts, working towards obtaining my Paramedic certification. I know that as my career continues to unfold, there will be more trauma and hard times, but I have learned so much over the past years, and I am working to manage them more efficiently. I am learning to believe that the biggest help is acknowledging that we can’t do it on our own. Having a support system and people who truly know you and love you is something that is invaluable. Having unconditional love is not something that I had throughout the first part of my life, but I have a small group of very dear people who have seen me at my worst and still love me. That is more than I could ever ask for. Those are the people who I am learning to lean on when things are too hard to manage alone. However, I also know I was meant to help people and being able to do that again is beyond exciting. It is wild how the events from our childhood all the way through our adulthood shape our path. I know without a doubt that I am where I am and in the career I am because of my childhood and life events. If I can save even one child or abused spouse from living the same life I have lived by serving as a dispatcher, EMT, or paramedic, then it is all worth it.

About the Author:

Sarah O'Brien, EMT, is an Emergency Medical Dispatcher at a private ambulance company in Massachusetts. She has 15 years of service in public safety as an EMT, dispatcher, and dispatch center supervisor. Sarah is passionate about first-responder mental health and holds special certifications in Peer Support, Critical Incident Stress Management, Mental Health First Aid, and Individual Crisis Management. Her next career goal is to become certified as a Paramedic. In her spare time, Sarah loves spending time with her four boys, especially on Sundays which are full of football.