Military background prepares her for 911 role
Crystal Keeler is a 911 call-taker/dispatcher for Harris County Sherrif’s Office.
“It can be pretty chaotic. Like Sunday, my first call was a homicide. There are people on the phone screaming and you’re hearing them talk to EMS and saying, ‘He just stopped breathing. He’s dead.’ Listening on the phone to someone dying is the hardest thing.
“Once, I had a woman just scream and scream, and she’s basically not listening to me or EMS trying to tell her she needs to do CPR on her baby that drowned. She just can’t focus. But while you’re listening to all of that, you have to be the one who remains all calm and soft. Sometimes when you lower your voice, they’ll lower their voice because they’re so scared.
“When you start this job, they immediately throw you in talking to people. There are some who have gotten up and said, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t handle it. It’s too stressful.’ We have chaplains in and out of that communications room all the time asking us, ‘How are you doing? How are you handling that?’
“I don’t believe just anybody can do this job. I don’t even know how I’m able to do it. Maybe it’s because of my military background or that I feel the Lord has put me in a place where he knows I like to help people and he knows I can do it. Because I didn’t think I could ever do something like this.”
— Crystal Keeler
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