National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week – April 13-19

Believe it or not, National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week – April 13-19 didn’t start with parades or presidential proclamations. Nope. It all began with a cake, a lunch break gone wrong, and one very frustrated group of dispatchers.

Let’s rewind the clock to 1981, in Contra Costa County, California. Back then, dispatchers didn’t have a dedicated appreciation week. They didn’t have celebration banners or thank-you donuts. They had… well, headsets and hustle. And that was about it.

But that all changed, thanks to a well-meaning lunch plan and a very bold dispatcher.

The sheriff at the time, Sheriff Rainey, decided he wanted to treat his administrative team (called secretaries back then) to a nice lunch. A kind gesture, right? Everyone loves a free meal, especially when it means stepping out of the office mid-day.

There was just one tiny problem: someone needed to answer the phones while the admin staff were out. The usual protocol was to forward those calls to the dispatch center — but only after business hours. Not at 11 a.m. on a busy weekday.

But guess what happened?

That’s right. Around 11 a.m., the entire admin team forwarded all incoming lines to dispatch and bounced out the door. Phones rang. Calls piled up. Confused citizens tried to reach administration and were met with bewildered dispatchers saying, “Umm, we don’t handle that.”