Dispatchers are often tasked with helping people in crisis — from fires to heart attacks to acts of violence. But longtime Powell Police Department dispatcher Bobbie Colvin says the hardest part of the job is being “only a voice.” While they send officers and other first responders to the scene of an emergency, dispatchers themselves must remain at their posts and wonder about the fate of those on the other end of the line.

“All you can do is what you can with your voice,” Colvin said.

However, Colvin did a lot in her more than three decades with Powell police.

Her interim boss, Lt. Matt McCaslin, said he couldn’t even begin to guess how many people Colvin helped and how many lives she’d touched over her 32 years of service.

Speaking at Colvin’s March 8 retirement ceremony, McCaslin described dispatchers as the first of the first responders, the unseen hero, the calm voice in the dark and the lifesaver on the line.

“They calm those who are experiencing the most horrific times in their life. They comfort those who are in pain and anguish. And they show the care and compassion for those in need — all which you have done in your career, Bobbie,” McCaslin said.

Colvin started as a part-time dispatcher with the city in 1991 and moved into a full-time role in March 1994. She initially did double-duty as a first responder, serving as an EMT at Powell Valley Hospital from 1989 to 1999.

Colvin took over the oversight of the Powell Police Department’s dispatch center in 2017, serving as the communications/records supervisor up until her retirement.

The countless calls she fielded ran the gamut from the mundane to life-and-death. One day, Colvin might answer an inquiry about what time a parade started; the next, she might need to instruct a caller on how to revive a person with CPR.

The job could swing from total boredom to a crisis at the ring of the phone. It’s stressful work that requires multitasking, Colvin said, as dispatchers must simultaneously assist callers while routing the right responders their way.

There are voices and calls she’ll never forget — such as the anguish of a man who tried in vain to save his wife’s life. Years later, Colvin still tears up as she recalls hearing the man tell his dying loved one goodbye. Colvin never got the chance to speak to the man again and doesn’t know what became of him.

“But if I could reach out all these years later, I wish he knew that he did everything he could possibly do” to save his wife, she said.

At her retirement ceremony, Colvin recalled another incident from June 29, 2019.

A citywide power outage was reported in the early morning hours, and Colvin dispatched one of the city’s electrical workers to the Vining Substation on North Ingalls Street. It wasn’t long, however, before a slew of more urgent 911 calls began pouring into the communications center: There’d been an explosion at the substation. Flames were shooting into the air.

“I knew that I had just sent one of our city workers there, and my heart just …,” Colvin said.

She quickly started calling the police chief, the mayor and the electrical superintendent Steve Franck — who assured that, despite her fears, everyone was OK.

“I was never so grateful to have somebody know that they were safe and that everything was fine,” Colvin recounted.

Among the thousands of calls for service that come into the Powell Police Department each year, not all are so serious. On her final day, Colvin fielded an inquiry from a local resident, who wanted to know whether “soda” or “pop” was the correct term for the carbonated beverages.

The dispatcher explained that the terminology depends on the region of the country — and told the caller that, “You just made my day.”

While the job was not without its critics, Colvin said she appreciated the broad support that local law enforcement enjoys in the community, from gifts of food to general kindness. At the luncheon, she also expressed thanks to her city colleagues, praising their work and the importance of what they do.

When Colvin started with the city, six of the police department’s current employees hadn’t even been born, and much changed during her tenure. She helped the department incorporate emergency medical dispatching to help provide life-saving instructions while technology advanced from Atari-looking teletype machines to systems that can track a 911 caller’s location in real time. 

Serving in law enforcement for so long meant watching some families stuck in generational cycles of abuse and crime — but others broke free. 

“You see a lot of people that make mistakes in their lives and then through the years you see them straighten out their lives and become good citizens,” Colvin said. “And that’s rewarding.”

As a voice on the other end of the line, dispatchers are often forgotten, Colvin said, but the many well wishes that poured in for her retirement suggest that won’t be the case with her service.

“As a[n] EMT [and] as Powell Police Department dispatcher she has saved hundreds of lives in our community,” Powell resident Molly Gould wrote in a Facebook post. “She will be greatly missed.”