Answering a call when a person's life depends on it

The call came in like any other 911 call.

But what Flathead County Sheriff's Office Dispatcher Linda Boe, 57, heard on the other end of the line three years ago was one of the more horrific events the seasoned dispatcher encountered during her career.

She didn't hear words.

Boe heard a sexual assault taking place.

The victim had managed to dial 911 without the assailant knowing, then laid the phone on the bed beside her.

The call came from a cell phone, so Boe couldn't trace the number to get an address.

Boe sprang into action, calling the Kalispell Police Department and using a records database to find several possible locations, narrowing them down to two and dispatching the appropriate resources to assist the victim, all while trying to contact the cell phone after losing the caller several times due to a battery problem.

Her quick thinking later helped convict the assailant and earned her a Letter of Commendation from the Sheriff's Office.

Hearing Boe laugh with her coworkers between calls, one would never guess the friendly, upbeat veteran can encounter more tragedy during a shift than most people do in a lifetime.

But Boe took it all in stride.

She said the camaraderie between emergency responders as well as her hobbies gave her outlets to help handle the life-and-death intensity of a dispatching career, from which she will retire this week.

"You can't take it home and dwell on it, because it will eat you up," she said.

"I certainly do not regret one minute of dispatching," she said. "But there just comes a time when you've got to be done with it."

Boe's 36 years of fielding emergency calls and sending the appropriate responders were exciting to the end.

"In my last week or two at the Sheriff's Office before my last day, I had a mom call saying her baby wasn't breathing and I had her do a head position to open the airway and he started breathing again. That kind of stuff is really exciting. Helping people is part of it. No two days were the same," she said.

Despite the seriousness of the job, it was not all about dealing with crises.

"We used to have this old couple down in Bigfork who used to call us on night shift and want us to send the quick response unit. Come to find out, when the quick response would get there, they wanted them to mash the potatoes for them. We finally figured those people out," she said.

From time to time, she also got calls from people who just needed someone to talk to.

Dispatching also allowed her access to areas most people don't get to see, such as working at the command post near forest fires.

When she started dispatching for the Whitefish Police Department at age 21 in 1974, Boe said she in effect replaced a light on a telephone pole.

Before she started fielding emergency calls from the Cadillac Hotel in Whitefish, calls to the Whitefish Police Department would light up a telephone pole on Main Street, alerting officers that the phone was ringing.

Boe lasted about four years at the hotel, spending her shifts acting as concierge and dispatcher and answering calls from a refrigeration company and a doctor's office. Sometimes, when the hotel would get busy, she even would wait tables.

"It was a railroad hotel, so the railroaders would come in at night and get rooms, and we'd run out and get them rooms then run back in and dispatch," she said, "I've done it all."

In 1978, Boe was promoted to dispatch supervisor and followed the radio system to North Valley Hospital, handling admissions along with emergency calls.

She came down to the Kalispell Police Department in 1980 and began working part time for the Flathead County Sheriff's Office in 1992, going full time in 1993.

She has held a supervisor position at every agency for which she has dispatched.

Boe will conclude her dispatching career when the 911 Center consolidation takes place on Tuesday.

Boe has earned awards from the Whitefish Police Department, Kalispell Police Department and the Flathead County Sheriff's Office and even has been written up in the Journal of Emergency Dispatch.

"I'm going to take the summer off. I was 12 the last time I had a summer off," she said. Although she said she does plan eventually to find a part-time job, she wants it to be less stressful.

"I want to do something fun, like flower arranging, that's pretty at the end," she said. "Something that somebody's life doesn't depend on."

Reporter Melissa Weaver may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at mweaver@dailyinterlake.com.