By Samantha Hawkins
Dear you,
I know you’re scared.
Not of the calls; not really. You’re scared that one day you’ll show up to work and discover they finally figured out you don’t belong here. The kid that was never any good at any small talk — now you literally talk people back from the brink.
You don’t think you’ll ever even make it to your first day solo. You have Indeed.com bookmarked on your phone. You check it more often than you’d ever admit. Every time your key card swipes at the door to your center, a small part of you expects the light to flash red and someone to tell you it was all a mistake.
I’m writing to tell you something you won’t believe for a long time. You’re going to make it. It will be your job for the next 11 years: the first, first responder, the 911 telecommunicator on the other end of the line.
You’ll survive training, even when you feel like everyone else understands the job better than you do. You’ll survive the mistakes that keep you awake at night and the moments that make you question whether you’re cut out for this work.
Before you’re even released from training, you’ll take your first officer-involved shooting call. It won’t be your last. You’ll hear screams you’ll never forget and carry stories you’ll never fully tell. You’ll learn what survivor’s guilt feels like when your shift ends and you get to go home, while some of the deputies you’ve spent hours talking to on the radio never get that chance.
Those experiences will change you. They should. But they won’t break you.
In fact, you’ll spend the next 11 years serving in eight communications centers across seven states. For 8 of those years, you’ll serve at your home center, answering calls and dispatching in the same community you call home. The addresses won’t just be locations on a screen. They’ll be neighborhoods you drive through every day, schools you recognize and businesses you’ve visited yourself. The people on the other end of the line won’t just be citizens. They’ll be your citizens. Your neighbors. Your community.
Your true calling
What you don’t know yet is that your greatest contribution to this profession won’t come through a headset. It’ll come through the people sitting next to you.
Somewhere along the way, you’ll develop a habit of raising your hand during shift briefings whenever a supervisor asks if someone can let a new hire sit with them for the day. At first, it won’t seem important; just another observer, another nervous new person trying to figure things out. But after enough of those days, enough questions answered, and enough moments spent helping someone understand something that once confused you too, you’ll realize how much fulfillment you find in helping others succeed.
That’s when you’ll know. Training is your calling, not because you’re the smartest person in the room, not because you have all the answers, but because you genuinely care about helping people find their confidence and discover they’re capable of more than they think.
The first time a training position opens, you’ll apply and you won’t get it. The rejection will sting. Yep. But the following year, you’ll apply again, and this time you’ll get the opportunity. That single moment will alter the trajectory of your career, as your love for training will ultimately extend far beyond the four walls of your center.
You’ll spend the next several years growing in ways you never expected. You’ll become a public speaker. You’ll attend your first national conference and leave inspired by the people on stage. You’ll make a promise to yourself that one day you’ll stand where they’re standing and make someone else feel the way you feel in that moment: energized, inspired, hopeful and ready to return to your center believing you can make a difference.
A year later, you’ll keep that promise, and that promise will open doors you never imagined possible. You’ll get your first acceptance to teach a class at a national level. Wow.
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Serving where you’re needed
Then, just when you begin wondering whether the fire is starting to fade, you’ll make a decision that changes everything.
You’ll leave your home center.
At first, it’ll feel like walking away from everything you’ve built. But you’ll quickly discover something important: you aren’t ready to quit 911, and 911 isn’t ready to quit on you yet.
The next 3 years will take you across the country as a traveling dispatcher. You’ll walk into centers where nobody knows your name. You’ll learn new systems, adapt to new procedures and meet professionals facing many of the same challenges you’ve faced throughout your own career.
The technology may be different. The policies may be different. The geography may be different. But the people are remarkably the same.
Dedicated. Exhausted. Resilient. Passionate.
For the first time in a long time, you’ll be the new person.
You’ll also discover that sometimes the greatest value you can bring isn’t technical expertise. It’s perspective. You’ll get to encourage 911 telecommunicators who have forgotten how much they matter. You’ll remind people why they started. You’ll help agencies improve, support the people doing the work, and then move on to the next center that needs you. Somewhere during those years, you’ll realize the fire never went out. It was simply waiting for a new challenge.
You’ll even find yourself serving through Hurricane Helene as a traveling dispatcher. The experience will deepen your appreciation for this profession and reinforce something you’ve been learning all along.
No matter where you go, public safety is powered by ordinary people doing extraordinary things on behalf of complete strangers.
Keep showing up
Then one day, you’ll do the thing you swore you’d never do.
You’ll hang up the headset.
For a while, you’ll wonder who you are without it. After all, so much of your identity has become intertwined with the job. You’ve spent more than a decade introducing yourself as a dispatcher, a trainer, a supervisor, a public safety professional.
But eventually, you’ll realize something that takes 11 years to learn. The headset was never the source of your purpose.
It was simply one way you lived it.
All those years of building relationships, speaking at conferences, sharing your experiences and investing in the profession were building something bigger than you realized. One of those connections will eventually introduce you to the CEO of a company whose mission aligns perfectly with your own. Before long, you’ll find yourself serving public safety from the commercial side, helping agencies and telecommunicators in a different way.
And that’s when you’ll understand something the scared trainee checking Indeed could never have imagined. The mission doesn’t end when you leave the chair.
You’ll still be teaching. You’ll still be advocating. You’ll still be supporting telecommunicators. You’ll still be helping people succeed. The platform changes. The purpose doesn’t.
So keep showing up. Keep raising your hand. Keep taking chances on yourself, even when you’re terrified. Every difficult call, every rejection, every move across state lines, every conference, every trainee, every risk is leading somewhere meaningful, even when you can’t see it yet.
And one last thing. You can delete the shortcut to Indeed.com now.
You’re going to be just fine.
Sincerely,
The person you become
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Samantha Hawkins is a former public safety professional with 11 years of experience in 911 communications, having served in eight ECCs across seven states. A passionate advocate for telecommunicator development and training, she now continues supporting the public safety community as an ECC engagement lead with ThisGen 911.
