Saturday, December 28, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Above And Beyond The Call

Nevada Highway Patrol dispatcher receives meritorious service award

Angela Calhoon, a rookie dispatcher with the Nevada Highway Patrol, was honored Friday for helping to save the life of a woman who had tried to kill herself in September. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Angela Calhoon smiles while holding her Nevada Highway Patrol meritorious service award as Deputy Chief Phil Tilt looks on. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

It was 2:19 on a Saturday afternoon in September when Angela Calhoon, a rookie dispatcher with the Nevada Highway Patrol, helped save a life without getting out of her chair.

Calhoon, 33, who had spent a decade in the Navy before joining the Highway Patrol last year, was honored Friday with its meritorious service award for the way she handled a convoluted situation involving a telephone call from central California and a woman in Las Vegas who had slit her wrists.

"She easily could have said, `Hey, that's not my job. Let 911 handle this,' " said Maj. Phil Tilt, noting that Highway Patrol dispatchers typically handle only car accident calls. "But she took the initiative on her own to help give information to the victim that saved her life."

It all started when a woman named Natalie slit her wrists on Sept. 28 because, her friends told authorities, her boyfriend told her to kill herself.

Natalie was in a house in northeastern Las Vegas, not far from Nellis Air Force Base.

She called a friend in a small central California town and told him what she had done. She had wrapped bandanas around her wounds, but the bleeding was so profuse that it soaked through.

She was incoherent, and fading in and out of consciousness.

The friend in California kept Natalie on the line while another friend dialed 911.

The California 911 operator could not help, and so she told the friend to call the Nevada Highway Patrol. Normally, such a call should be handled by police or fire department dispatchers.

Calhoon, who had joined the Highway Patrol in December 2001 and had only been out of training for a few months, answered the phone.

"Nevada Highway Patrol, this is Angela."

"Hi," said a woman who later gave her name as Christina. "My friend just called me and told me she slit her wrists in Las Vegas, Nevada."

For the next 15 minutes or so, Calhoon struggled with the caller, who did not know the suicidal woman's address or home telephone number.

Calmly, Calhoon stressed how important it was for authorities to get to the woman as soon as possible.

At one point, Calhoon suggested that the friends try to persuade Natalie to dial 911 herself so dispatchers would have her address and phone number.

"Have her crawl to her home phone, however she needs to get there," Calhoon advised. "We need to keep her conscious, so she can do that."

Later, she expressed her frustration.

"Maybe you need to get a little harder with her and say that she will die if she does not get to that phone," she told the woman's friend.

Calhoon later said the situation was frustrating because she was stuck in her office, unable to help the woman until she could get her address.

Eventually, the friends in California were able to dig up a home phone number for the suicidal woman, and paramedics were sent to her house. She was taken to the closest hospital, where she was treated for her injuries.

Calhoon said that in the days after the ordeal, she broke tradition and called the hospital herself to check on the woman's condition.

"I just wanted to make sure she was OK," Calhoon said.