Shepherd takes over dispatch

RITZVILLE – Adams County Sheriff's office has a new 911 Systems Manager.

Angie Fode, who has been employed with the sheriff's office 29 years, retired Jan. 31 and Melissa Shepherd took over Feb. 1.

“It's exciting and terrifying, all at the same time,” Shepherd said.

Shepherd has been working with the county the past 14 years as a dispatcher.

"Melissa brings experience and leadership capabilities needed to lead the team forward in so many ways," Sheriff Dale Wagner said. "Melissa has big shoes to fill, and I am very confident in her abilities."

Fode began as a part-time employee, working both dispatch and corrections.

“When they separated the two units in 1997, I decided to stay in dispatch. I didn't want to deal with the jail anymore,” Fode said. Working for corrections, she fed inmates, took them to court, passed out medications and got them ready for transport. “Now dispatch has a staff and corrections has a staff, but before you did both.”

Fode said when she started, there were just four or five dispatchers.

“There was always just one person on during the day. There was a jail supervisor and another person,” Fode said. “Then it got to the point where there was a supervisor and two of us on, just because during the day it was very busy with court and people talking to attorneys.”

Fode was appointed the 911 Dispatch Manager in 2007.

“Now we have been allocated nine dispatchers total, plus the supervisor,” Fode said. “There's rarely just one dispatcher on at a time.”

“If there is, it's for a very short time. We try not to leave it too wide open,” Shepherd said.

“It's gotten to the point where you just never know what's going to happen. There's been times where there's just one person on, and they just get hammered,” Fode said.

The dispatchers handle all the county 911 calls, as well as calls on the business line. They dispatch law enforcement, city police and county sheriff's deputies, ambulance and fire calls. They take the 911 calls for Othello, but send the calls down for the Othello Police Department, fire department and ambulance to be dispatched by the Othello Police Department.

They average about 1,000 911 calls per month, along with an additional 100 or so per month for the Ritzville Police and 200-300 calls per month for the county sheriff's office.

Shepherd said in December, they took 279 calls just for the sheriff's department.

“And that was a winter month. Summer months are more calls, you have more people traveling,” said Shepherd. “And you have harvest, which always brings more traffic stuff going on. Hopefully this year COVID will not completely limit us.”

Asked if calls had decreased with so many events cancelled, they said no, but the types of calls had changed a little.

“We're still getting calls, we just traded one busy for a different busy,” Shepherd said.

Fode said they've gotten a few more suicidal calls, though not a big increase.

“We've had more people calling in, struggling and needing mental health,” Fode said, adding they've also had a few more calls for domestic violence.

Shepherd said summer calls would also increase due to fire season.

“That used to be my favorite, fire season,” Shepherd said. “I always love the big fires and coordinating all the help in, and getting everybody out there.”

Asked about memorable calls over her long career, Fode said the ones that stick out are probably the saddest ones.

“Back when I was dispatching, we had three or four vans full of young Chinese dancers who had just finished performing in Spokane and they were trying to get down to Portland,” Fode recalled. “It was early in the morning, and they were going too fast. Two of the vans wrecked and there were two people who died.”

Fode said there was wreckage all over Highway 395, and “we called in every single ambulance we could.”

Fode said the dancers were all in their late teens and 20s, and none of them spoke English.

“Some of them were brought up to Ritzville, and we were very fortunate at the time because there was a minister here who spoke Chinese. So he helped the hospital here,” Fode said, adding a Chinese restaurant owner in Othello helped translate for those who went to the hospital there, but had to wait until he was done serving the breakfast rush.

“It was scary. I was all by myself on that one,” Fode said. “It was kind of crazy.”

Fode said one difficult aspect of the work was not knowing the outcomes of calls.

“A lot of times, you never know what really happens to the people,” Fode said. “There have been, on occasion, times where people have written notes or called and said thanks for the help, which is always nice to hear.”

Shepherd, who was trained by Fode when she was first hired, said she like all aspects of the job, especially the adrenaline rush.

“I grew up around law enforcement,” Shepherd said. “It's always something different, every day. There's never a dull moment. We may have boring moments, but there's always interesting and new things that happen that boggle your mind.”

Shepherd said she had taken lots of calls over the years, and some of them she can laugh at now.

“They probably weren't funny in the moment,” Shepherd said. “They probably aren't funny in general, but we do tend to develop a darker sense of humor about things.”

While the current set-up doesn't require the 911 Systems Manager to work shift work, it does require them being available 24/7 for any problems or questions staff may encounter.

“It's 24/7, so if something goes wrong, no matter what time of day or night, we can get a phone call,” Fode said.

Shepherd said they were looking into creating a lead dispatcher position for someone to “help take the load off and oversee some things in there.”

“It will be good to have a second person who can make decisions. That way your phone doesn't have to be attached to your hip,” Fode said, adding technology has improved significantly since she first started, enabling some issues to be handled from home.

“I only had to come down once so far, when the phones were broken and one of the admin lines went down. We still had 911, but because of that one breaking, it was disconnecting people who tried to call that line,” Shepherd said. “Centurylink came out and had it fixed in less than 24 hours.”

Fode said she didn't have any problems with retiring, because she's always had “a darn good crew who always do a good job.”

“Everybody has their strengths and weaknesses, and I think because we all work so closely together, we all know what those are,” Shepherd said. “So one can pick up where one lacks.”

“If you'd walk in when there was an incident going on, and there's two dispatchers who face forward, but all they have to do is look at each other and it's just teamwork,” Fode said. “They just do it so flawlessly.”

“It can be really seamless, having that split ear and knowing what the other person's doing and knowing what needs to be done so jumping in and doing that,” Shepherd said.

“We're lucky in that respect,” Fode said.

Fode, who grew up in Ritzville and lives in Lind with her husband Gregg, said plans for retirement mostly involve doing some fun things at home like arts and crafts and reading.

“My husband is still working, but we bought a bigger RV and we're hoping to maybe go more places, at least on weekends,” Fode said. “We normally don't go too far, because it is amazing how many things are close by that are just as much fun to see as going long distances.”