Carol Halsey has been a police dispatcher for the DeKalb Police Department for nearly 11 years, and DeKalb resident since 1984.

Northern Star: Why don’t you tell everyone who may not be familiar with your job what exactly you do in an average day.

Carol Halsey: Well, why don’t I just tell you what we’re responsible for? [The communications department] is an answering point for DeKalb County 911. We answer 911 calls for all DeKalb residents. The emergency calls will come into our answering point. We will then field the call, whether it is a medical emergency or law enforcement emergency. We’ll send the appropriate responding units and we’ll determine what type of emergency it is and how many units to send. We answer non-emergency calls and all information calls for the DeKalb Police Department.

NS: What got you interested in doing this?

CH: Actually, I started in the finance department and I was over there for five years before I transferred over. Every day you come in it’s a new experience. There’s no two days that are the same and there’s no two situations that are ever the same. Every situation is handled in a different way.

NS: Switching up a little, why did you choose to move [to DeKalb]?

CH: I just ended up here. You make decisions throughout your life that ultimately give you the destiny of where you’re going to live. It’s just at the time you don’t realize you’re making those decisions.

NS: What’s one of your favorite things about DeKalb?

CH: I like the community. It’s a real tight community. People try to do things together. I think there’s stuff to do all the time. There’s always something at Northern going on. They always have art shows and speakers going on out there.

NS: Do you think the town is growing apart, as it gets larger and as times change?

CH: I think there’s a lot of hometown pride in DeKalb from the people who live here and enjoy living here … Working all together, I think it works out well.

NS: Going back to your job. What’s one of the stranger calls you can remember taking?

CH: Well, we had a person … that wanted to know what time Chesapeake (the bagel bakery on First Street) opened. And we don’t know that. One of the odder ones, someone asked where to land a hot air balloon in the city of DeKalb … that was many years ago. A lot of people will call for phone numbers and we try to accommodate that. A lot of people call when it snows and ask, “When are the roads going to open up?” And we tell them it will be opened up when it stops snowing and the street department can get back on the roads. So they ask, “Well when will that be?”

NS: So they kind of expect you to know how to predict the weather?

CH: Yeah, and we can’t do that.

NS: What’s your favorite part about your job here?

CH: Having every day different. Every day is a new day. Running hot calls. Running the major calls. It’s always exciting.

NS: OK, lastly, try and complete this sentence. Without me the city of DeKalb wouldn’t…

CH: Without me? It would not cease to function. I can be replaced.

NS: Well, without your job doing the dispatch.

CH: Without the telecommunicators … there’s a saying in the dispatcher field. Dispatchers save seconds, seconds save lives. And without us, the ability to save those seconds. And without us you’d have to have someone else to field the calls and answer the phones. It would be an impossible job without someone to answer the phones.