Meet the people answering your 911 calls during National Public Safety Telecommunicators' Week

URBANA, Ill. (WAND) - This week is National Public Safety Telecommunicators' Week, highlighting the men and women who answer 911 calls.

Working behind the scenes, it's not often that dispatchers are recognized or put into the spotlight.

METCAD 911 in Urbana, which covers all of Champaign County, offered to peel back the curtain into what every day looks like for emergency telecommunicators. WAND News spoke to Brian Peddycoart, a 27-year veteran, and Brent Daugherty, with 17-years of experience himself.

Both said you never know what to expect.

"From day to day, there's no normal," Daugherty said. Peddycoart added, "Every day is a little different. Every hour is a little different."

Emergency dispatchers are the first people who know about an emergency, sending alarms to fire houses and addresses to police. At METCAD, the telecommunicators are highly trained and cross-trained to take calls or dispatch to police, fire and EMS.

"Any person in the room can work any one of those responsibilities, and that's really helpful in cases like a tornado response, for example," Daugherty said. "[Brian] may shuffle those assignments so we've got the best people handling those high-risk or high-acuity emergencies."

Even with the decades of experience Peddycoart and Daugherty tote, there are still calls that take a toll. Calls that stick with them. The hardest part, they say, is not getting closure.

"It's not just at night," Peddycoart said. "It's [when you're] having a conversation with somebody, and you hear it in the back of your brain. Parts of that call or people's emotions on the other end. And that can be kind of unsettling."

"We hear what's going on, but there's a lot of details your mind fills in for you," Daugherty explained. "When you combine that with sometimes the lack of information [on] how that call was closed out, the outcome of that call, it can really, really weigh on you."

Both their "whys" are similar. They know they're helping people.

"You can walk out of here some days and say, 'We really rocked that, and we really did a good job and made a difference in that person's worst day," Peddycoart said.

Daugherty added, "You really can walk out at the end of a shift and think of very specific situations where you know you made a tangible impact, and that's pretty rare in a career."

METCAD 911 is nearing full staffing levels, but if you're interested in becoming an emergency telecommunicator, you can learn more by clicking here.