Chenango dispatcher named national winner for life saving efforts

NORWICH – The Chenango County Sheriff’s Office announced today that 9-1-1 dispatcher Jeff Harter has been named the national winner in Rave Mobile Safety’s first-ever Smart Telecommunicator Awards, a nationwide online campaign aimed at drawing attention to National Telecommunicators Week, held today through April 14.

In March, a total of twenty 9-1-1 call-takers and dispatchers across the country – including Harter – were nominated for the award. Harter, a Sheriff’s Office dispatcher since 2006, was recognized for his life-saving actions of June 24, 2011. On that date, he received a frantic 9-1-1 call from Gwen Hornbeck, mother of then 17-year-old Lauren LaMariana. The emergency? Her daughter was choking on a piece of hot dog and was lying on the floor, no longer breathing and turning blue.

After family members’ unsuccessful attempts to dislodge the piece of food, Hornbeck called 9-1-1.

Said the distraught mother, “We couldn’t help her ... I didn’t know what to do.”

While his fellow dispatchers relayed instructions to emergency and ambulance personnel, Harter did what any dispatcher trained in Emergency Medical Dispatch would do – he attempted to calm Hornbeck down while providing instructions in a calm, professional manner. Without his help, said Hornbeck, her daughter would have certainly died.

“It would have been way too late,” she said of the ambulance which arrived approximately 15 minutes after the original 9-1-1 call was placed. “There would have been nothing ... she was totally blue.”

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Minutes after taking the call, Harter’s instructions to push on the prone teenager’s abdomen had resulted in a partial airway for LaMariana, who was now breathing, if barely. Minutes after that, the hot dog had been fully dislodged and she was breathing normally.

Said Chief Dispatcher A. Jones, “That’s why we’re here ... it doesn’t get any better than that.”

As the first line in the county’s emergency service, dispatchers rarely receive the recognition they deserve, which is why National Telecommunicator Week is so important, added Jones. And it’s a department that has – like any other – evolved over the years. Nowadays, dispatchers don’t just take down and relay information, they also provide medical instructions, something Jones called “a huge part of our call-taking process.”