On the Front (Phone) Lines

The late-night, I'm-thinking-about-suicide calls were never easy. Nor were the calls from the parents of runaway children. Or the victims of domestic violence.

But for 30 years, Joyce Thompson tried to keep her cool as a 911 dispatcher who fielded calls for the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office.

"You listen. You do not yell. You stay calm," she said, recalling the frantic voices that drifted through her headset many nights. "That's how I did it."

Last week, as communities across the United States marked National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, Thompson was home in Winchester, settling into her third week of retirement.

But, already, she was missing the action.

"It just gets into your blood," she said.

Thompson, 64, witnessed Loudoun's growth boom like few others, watching as 911 calls handled by the Emergency Communications Center in Leesburg soared. The county's population has tripled since 1990.

From fiscal 2004 to fiscal 2007, the call volume rose from 19,260 to 48,403, according to the sheriff's department. And that didn't include calls to the center's non-emergency line, 267,603 of them in 2007.

Thompson said some people use 911 inappropriately for non-emergency calls. "Like, they'll call to ask, 'Can I speak to Deputy So and So?' There will also be animal calls. Like, 'There's a dog running loose in the neighborhood.' These people should call animal control, not 911."

Thompson said she didn't complain, though.

"You know, the phones would be ringing off the hook, and some people would be fussing: 'Oh, I wish the phones would stop ringing,' " she said. "I would say, 'Hey, this is called job security. Keep those calls coming in!' "

Loudoun was decidedly more laid-back, more small-town, when Thompson applied for a county job in fall 1977. She was determined to launch a career of some sort because her eldest child had just entered kindergarten.