Ted and Susan Cook

“9-1-1. Where is your emergency?”

Three times Theodore “Ted” Cook, technical coordinator for the Mooresville (Ind.) Police Department, heard the same answer to that question and learned that his wife, Susan, had been involved in a personal injury accident. On three occasions, the injury crash had occurred within two blocks of the comm center. The last 9-1-1 call to come in from Susan occurred in 2004. That call indicated that she was experiencing difficulty breathing.

Beginning in June 1975, Ted served the Mooresville PD as a reserve dispatcher. He went full time into dispatch on Jan. 5, 1979, and has served continuously since that date. He is now in his 31st year in dispatch and is the oldest member of the PD. Mooresville PD has 22 sworn officers, four full-time dispatchers, nine part-time dispatchers and two clerks.

“In 1989,” says Ted, “my wife, with her pregnant sister in the car, was making a turn, and a dump truck was blocking her view of oncoming traffic. When she was already into the turn, a motorcycle drove out from behind the dump truck headed for the passenger side of her Plymouth automobile. She accelerated rapidly to avoid the collision, but the motorcycle hit the right rear side of the car, sending the driver and passenger over the trunk. The driver broke an arm, and the passenger sprained a leg. If Susan hadn’t accelerated, the motorcyclists would have hit the passenger compartment, with possibly more severe injuries and, possibly, injuring her sister.”

The second call, in 1990, involved a rear-end crash. Susan was driving a 1981 Chevy Malibu and was rear-ended by a Dodge Shadow. A bee had somehow gotten into the Dodge, and the driver was apparently trying to swat it away and didn’t realize that the traffic in front of her was stopped. After rear-ending Susan’s Malibu, the air bag in the Dodge deployed. As it deflated, the driver’s foot came down hard on the accelerator, causing her car to hit the Malibu a second time. The Cooks’ son and niece were passengers in Susan’s car. At the time, seatbelts were not required for backseat passengers, and their son, who was wearing his football gear, was unbelted in the backseat behind Susan. He was thrown forward, breaking the seat and pushing Susan into the emergency brake. His football pads protected him, but Susan broke her left foot. The niece was uninjured.

Two years later, in 1992, Ted received an eerily familiar call. This time his wife was driving a 1988 Oldsmobile when she was rear-ended by a truck at the same intersection. Fortunately, she escaped without serious injury.

In 2004, Susan dialed 9-1-1 from a tobacco shop four blocks from the comm center. Ted realized that she was having trouble breathing. He quickly asked a part-timer, Steve Eltzroth, to cover for him while he drove to the shop. When he arrived, Ted found Susan hyperventilating and clutching a scratch-off lottery ticket in her hand. She had just won $100,000.

After ascertaining that Susan was OK and discovering that the shop could not verify the ticket on premises, Ted and Susan jumped in Susan’s car—with Susan still clutching the ticket in her hand—and started the drive from Mooresville to the Indiana State Lottery Commission in Indianapolis, approximately 20 miles away. They had driven just two blocks when Ted remembered that he was on duty. He quickly called Chief Tim Viles and asked if Steve could work out the day for him—volunteering to pick up the tab for the city. The chief granted him the day off.

Not all emergencies that hit close to home in the comm center have such positive outcomes. In the August issue ofPublic Safety Communications,we’ll take a look at several other incidents involving comm center personnel and offer some lessons learned that comm centers across the U.S. can use to ensure that when an emergency affects them personally that they have the resources at hand to handle the crisis professionally and get their personnel and families the help they need.

About the Author
Keri Losavio is editor of APCO’s Public Safety Communications. Contact her via e-mail at [email protected]