New 911 director returns to native state

For Elizabeth Brooks, taking over the director position at the Flathead Emergency Communications Center is more than just a step in her career — it’s a long-awaited homecoming.

While Brooks has most recently been running a two-county 911 center in Indiana, she is originally from Missoula, where she graduated from Sentinel High School.

“When you’re young, sometimes you want to see the other parts of the world, then you get out there and realize there’s no place better than western Montana,” said Brooks, 35.

After spending a year studying at Salish Kootenai College after high school, Brooks ended up in the Hoosier state, where she continued to take some classes and eventually applied for a dispatcher opening at the local 911 center at the suggestion of her husband, a sheriff’s deputy in the area.

Dispatching work is among her favorites.

“I very much enjoyed being a dispatcher,” Brooks said. “In fact, one of the challenges here will be the fact that I miss dispatching. You get that direct contact with the public and the emergency responders, so you feel actively involved in the helping process.”

Brooks continued to handle calls even as she moved up through the ranks, eventually finding herself heading the dispatch center. Even in her last few days, she said, she was taking calls.

IT IS THAT love of dispatching that Brooks said will guide her leadership of Flathead County’s 911 Center.

“Because I’ve come from a dispatch background, I have kind of a special place in my heart for what they deal with on a daily basis, and I think that’s going to be a unique view from the director’s position as opposed to how it has been in the past,” she said. “It’s my understanding that not a lot of them have come from that background.”

Brooks said she is most interested in providing that point of view to help dispatchers as well as responders and the public, and it is a point of view she said works just as well in Montana as it did in Indiana.

“There are more similarities than differences,” Brooks said. “People are essentially the same wherever you go, and if the people are the same, then their problems tend to be the same as well.”

What will be most challenging, she said, is coming into her new position in the middle of an ongoing conversation about issues at the center and questions about its future direction. 

Brooks explained that her immediate focus is going to be on addressing staffing requirements and easing the stress on dispatchers while dealing with overtime issues.

Next on her list of difficult issues will be handling interlocal agreements and funding issues.

But dealing with problems at the center is far from her only goal.

“A lot of good is done at dispatch, and it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention,” Brooks said. “The headlines would lead some to believe that there’s just constant problems at dispatch. There are good people doing really good work, and I think that there needs to be more of a spotlight put on them.”

BROOKS’ homecoming is not a solitary one, as she returns with her husband, daughter and son.

In fact, Brooks’ children are a central part of her desire to return to her native state.

“It’s important to me that my kids [are] raised here, where I was raised,” she said.

Not least among her reasons, however, is the weather. Compared to the relative dryness of Montana, the Midwest has very high humidity, making more difficult the things she took for granted, such as maintaining a garden.

She also missed all the outdoor activities.

“Hiking just isn’t the same in corn and bean fields,” Brooks said jokingly.

Now that she is back in Montana, Brooks just took her children on what she called their “first real hike” to Hidden Lake in Glacier National Park.

All in all, Brooks is settling in well, starting her new position as her daughter just attended her first day of kindergarten and her son went off for his first time at day care. She also has a horse and one of her dogs, with her second dog soon to make the trip from Indiana.

But the No. 1 reason she’s glad to be back?

“Oh gosh, it’s home,” she said.

Reporter Jesse Davis may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at jdavis@dailyinterlake.com.