By Karl Fischer, Contra Costa Times, California

SAN PABLO — A serial 911 caller went to jail this week, after police said she dialed for emergency help more than 3,000 times since September.

The vast majority of those calls were hang-ups, but more than 20 times in four months the anonymous caller reported a man with a gun near an apartment complex at 2645 Church Lane in San Pablo, often prompting the city’s full complement of patrol officers to drive there at emergency speed and investigate with guns drawn.

“She admitted that she did it 30 or 40 times. She said the police being there made her feel safe,” San Pablo police Sgt. Tom Hughes said. “Also, she said she likes cop shows.”

But investigators found phone records showing that Yvette Hord, 46, who lives at the Church Lane apartment complex, dialed 911 as many as 260 times in one day. She generally used cell phones to mask her identity, but police and dispatchers tracked the pattern and eventually learned her name from a shred of information recorded during one of the earliest calls, Hughes said.

The Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office filed a misdemeanor charge of making 3,000 annoying telephone calls, and another misdemeanor charge of making 21 false police reports. If convicted of all charges, she could face as many as two years in jail.

Prosecutors issued a $3 million arrest warrant for Hord, whom police arrested Sunday. She remained at County Jail in Richmond on Wednesday.

The West Contra Costa Consolidated Dispatch Center received the calls from Sept. 17, 2011, through Jan. 28, Hughes said. Operated by neighboring Richmond, the dispatch center fields 911 calls for most of western Contra Costa County.

Hord accounted for 6 percent of all 911 calls in the region during those four months, Hughes said.

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