A day in the life of a police dispatcher can include many quirky
events, so simply talking a talking a victim who fell from a cliff
through the rescue is a part of the routine; for 19-year-old Sarah,
the victim, it was anything but ordinary.
A day in the life of a police dispatcher can include many quirky events, so simply talking a talking a victim who fell from a cliff through the rescue is a part of the routine; for 19-year-old Sarah, the victim, it was anything but ordinary.
When the call came in late Sunday afternoon to the Morgan Hill Police Department, Public Safety lead dispatcher Paula Rodriguez was on the line. A teenager had tumbled into a ravine and was on a ledge 10 feet from the top. She had been walking alone near Anderson Lake, close to the edge of the ravine, when the ground crumbled beneath her and she went down.
Fortunately, Sarah – initial reports did not give a last name – had a cell phone and called the AT&T operator, who patched the call through to the police department.
“Although it is in the works, we are not yet able to determine where the person is calling from when they call from a cellular phone,” Rodriguez said Monday. “And the connection was terrible. It kept cutting out on us. A few times, we lost the connection.
“Here’s this girl telling me she was hanging over the edge of the cliff, that she couldn’t move an inch or she would fall down farther, and we have to call each other back.”
When Rodriguez tried to establish Sarah’s location, an unreliable cellular signal was not the only problem. It was difficult for Sarah to describe the path she had taken because she hadn’t been paying close attention as she walked along.
“She first told me she was near the picnic area at Anderson,” Rodriguez said. “Well, there are a lot of picnic areas there … After repeating things back and forth, we finally established that she had come straight down Dunne Avenue, and then I began to realize where she might be.”
But Rodriguez, a 19-year veteran of the MHPD, still had to identify some landmarks at the reservoir east of the city so firefighters from the California Department of Forestry (CDF) and Santa Clara County Fire Department (SCCFD) could find Sarah.
“It turned out she was near the Chopper Flats picnic area, on the other side of the lake,” Rodriguez said. “She had parked her car in one of the pullouts and started walking. At first, she thought she was somewhere between her care and the picnic area, and at least that was a starting point.”
Although Sarah knew people were searching for her, she could not see the roadway from where she lay. With the cell phone signal fluctuating, it was difficult for Sarah and Rodriguez to complete a conversation.
“Later, she realized she had walked past her car, and I was able to give a better description of where she probably was,” Rodriguez said. “She said she could occasionally hear traffic on the roadway. I asked her if she could hear the engines, and she said she thought she could.”
As the connection between them was cut yet again, Rodriguez said she only got through to Sarah’s voice mail and left her a message with the CDF direct number, so she could talk to the dispatcher directly.
A helicopter joined the search, and rescue personnel left the engines to search on foot. At this point, though, Rodriguez lost touch of the search.
“I knew she had called CDF directly, because I was listening to their frequency, but then they switched to a tactical frequency, and I wasn’t able to hear the actual rescue,” she said.
Sarah had repeatedly told her she was okay, Rodriguez said, and she knew rescue was imminent, but it was difficult not to worry.
SCCFD Battalion Chief Brad Darbro said the girl’s rescue was successful because of the cooperation of the agencies involved.
“The happy outcome was due, in large part, to the excellent work of the MHPD dispatcher, and the teamwork of everyone involved,” he said Monday.
Sarah was not hurt beyond bruises and cuts. Once she was located, a firefighter rappelled down the cliff and was able to secure her with a rope. She was lowered to the bottom of the ravine, and the firefighter walked her back up to her car, Darbro said.
