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05/25/2022 08:30 AM“911, what’s your emergency?” That’s the phrase Christine “Chris” Midolo has spoken as a civilian dispatcher at the North Haven Police Department for the past three decades.
While such words are just part of the job for Christine, they denote a haven of help and authority for those seeking emergency assistance. On May 31, Chris will retire from the job she has loved from the first day she started.
Before becoming a dispatcher, Chris worked at the Wawa company on York Street in New Haven on the midnight shift. It was at Wawa that she met many police officers in her course of work, which resulted in her securing a part-time dispatcher job at Yale University.
“I was only there [at Yale] for two or three months when the North Haven [dispatcher] job opened up,” Chris recalls. “I applied for it and surprisingly I got it.”
From then on, Chris, a North Haven native, settled into a career that was both rewarding and enjoyable, despite the more stressful moments of being a police dispatcher.
One such event Chris remembers all too well was the time, in May of 2018, when a man took his wife hostage and the house exploded while police were negotiating with them. The event made national news.
“I was not on duty at the time,” Chris recalls, “but I heard the explosion, and I heard the call on the scanner, and from the sounds of the voices I knew I had to be there.”
Chris dropped everything and headed to the police department to help.
Such times of stress were the exception, however, and not the rule.
Although retirement is welcome, a bittersweet aspect of Chris’ retirement is the loss of what she calls “family.”
“Every dispatcher that is employed there now, I have trained, so I’m the last of the oldest generation that’s there,” says Chris.
Training today, Chris notes, is not what it was years ago.
“With the way the job has changed over the years, the training is probably a good 4 ½ months now where I used to be able to train somebody in about two months when they would be on their own,” explains Chris.
All emergency calls are routed to the police department dispatch center first—for police, fire, and medical help request—and then the dispatchers send the appropriate department members to respond to the scene.
It’s not just legitimate calls for emergency assistance that land at Chris’ headset, “we get the absurd calls, and we get the serious calls,” she says, adding, “it ranges, and every call is different.”
The frustration of the job comes from those absurd calls, Chris notes.
“Sometimes a person will call 911 without a real emergency. “When somebody says to you ‘911,’ what does that mean to you? What’s your response?” she asks. “If your emergency is ‘I stubbed my toe’ or ‘I have a bat in my house,’ is that an emergency?” Of course, the answer is no. “So, we get the gamut of calls.”
Many times, Chris notes, the elderly will call 911 because the number is easy to remember, and they call for assistance or guidance with issues that are not of a true emergency nature. While Chris trained her dispatchers to always try to help such callers, there is a danger of tying up personnel with non-emergencies for that moment when some calls in with a true life or death situation.
Unlike many TV shows where dispatchers are depicted helping deliver a baby over the phone, Chris says she’s only experienced the start of one such call.
“They were on their way to the hospital, and they had pulled off [the highway] and wound up on Universal Drive, so I wasn’t far into [the call] when rescue personnel arrived on the scene to deliver the child,” Chris recalls.
The only children Chris has delivered, she says with a laugh, “are the children I had,” a son and a daughter, who live in nearby towns.
Before Chris’s seniority allowed her to choose the day shift in dispatch, she worked the long, quiet hours of the midnight shift.
“Unlike a big city, things quiet down at night,” Chris says. So, while waiting for an emergency call during the slow hours, Chris filled her time with her crocheting. It was a hobby that benefited dozens of officers and their families.
“Any time an officer’s wife got pregnant, I would crochet a baby blanket,” recalls Chris. “I’ve probably crocheted upwards of 90 baby blankets in my career for the officers I worked with.”
When it comes to understanding what inspired Chris to become a dispatcher, she notes a history that began with her interest in police work.
“When I was working for Yale, I had a lieutenant who pushed me to do the certification test for police work, because I always had an interest in law enforcement,” Chris recalls. “But I was a little older at the time [age 32], so back then I thought that was kind of old. I had the kids and I never thought I would be able to become a police officer. I trained for it, but my downfall was the running.
“Unfortunately, I’m a smoker,” admits Chris, adding. “I passed everything else, but I couldn’t pass the running part of the physical testing.”
After that, Chris realized her calling was to remain in dispatch and be that professional, calm, and caring voice that answers the 911 calls and sends rescuers out to the people.
“I believe there is a reason for everything,” reflects Chris. “You may not realize it at first, but you do, afterward. Through the good, through the bad, through the indifferent, I love what I do,” she says adding, “If I was to continue to work, I would still love going to work [at police dispatch] every day.”
And when it came to training new dispatchers, Chris had a philosophy she imparted to each.
“I’ve always told my trainees, ‘You’ve got to kill people with kindness because people call the police when they don’t know who else to call,’” Chris explains, adding, “So even if it’s just listening, if you are patient and you are kind, the appreciation should be your reward.
“You are pretty much customer service for the police department when you are answering those phones,” continues Chris, “and if it’s not an emergency call, you can take a half a second of time to guide them or get them a phone number or tell them who they should be calling, instead of getting short and impatient with people because it’s not a police matter. That little bit of information you give that person goes a long way for them and makes them happy.”
Other than that, the real reward for Chris comes in the form of lives saved.
“Any time there’s a medical call and you’ve gotten your EMS and your control out in enough time to save somebody, that’s a win,” says Chris. “Any time there is a win, a save, no matter what it is, I know I’ve done my job the way it was supposed to go because a win doesn’t always happen.”
Chris’s immediate plans in retirement include the chance to spend more time with family and to do some touring on the new Honda Gold Wing motorcycle she and her husband, Salvatore, plan to purchase and to also travel with their big camper.
“I’m looking forward to this chapter in my life,” Chris concludes. “I raised my grandson, he just turned 18, so it’s time for me and Pop [Salvatore] to do some traveling and do some living for ourselves while we’re still young enough to do that.”