Thank You To Emergency Dispatchers Everywhere
Last Friday’s thwarted assassination attempt on U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reveals the stalwart, lifesaving decision-making skills of emergency dispatchers.
In the middle of the night, 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was home in San Francisco when an intruder broke in, demanding to see his wife.
“Where is Nancy?” David DePape insisted. Later, authorities would find zip ties and duct tape in his bag. At the time, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington, D.C.
According to media reports, Paul Pelosi — who’d dialed 911 from his bathroom while his assailant was briefly distracted — made the lifesaving decision to leave the line open.
The police dispatcher who picked up, upon hearing Pelosi in the background, used her instincts and initiated an expedited wellness check. Police reportedly arrived at the Pelosi home within three minutes.
When police arrived at Pelosi’s San Francisco home, they eventually pulled the hammer-wielding assailant off her husband, Paul, who’d by then suffered a skull fracture and other serious injuries. He’s expected to fully recover.
It is perhaps no surprise that this incident stirs up memories from my own experience with a home invasion on May 9, 2014, during which I, too, called 911, and tried to speak “in code” while standing in front of an intruder.
Unlike the Pelosi emergency, my intruder was a woman who showed up during daylight hours. Moreover, unlike Pelosi, I wasn’t alone: two of my three kids and their friends were home at the time.
My intruder arrived with a bag and demanded I listen to her to her demands. She insisted we eat the food she brought. She insisted I leave her with my children. She insisted she was friends with celebrities. She looked me dead in the eye and insisted I was someone else.
Over the course of 15 minutes — which felt like hours — I gently encouraged her to leave, but she wouldn’t. She stood between my youngest child and me with her back to the front door, growing increasingly agitated and confused. And then, as soon as she reached for her backpack and began rumaging through its contents, I knew I needed more help.
Like Paul Pelosi, I picked up the phone and dialed 911, speaking in code so as not to tip off my intruder. Here’s the recording from my 911 call:
Though I tried to project an air of calm, I was terrified inside and running on adrenaline. Thankfully, the emergency dispatcher’s steady, unruffled, reassuring tone let me know that:
a) she clearly understood I was in trouble, and that
b) she was sending immediate help.
Four squad cars arrived within 3 minutes of my call.
Unlike Paul Pelosi, whose assailant tragically turned to violence, my family and I were spared from physical harm. After police arrived at Pelosi’s home, assailant DePape wrestled a hammer from Pelosi’s hand and smashed Pelosi’s skull. When my intruder’s backpack was later searched outside my home, it was found to be filled with Mason jars of homemade soup.
Still.
When I think back to those moments when I stood face-to-face with my intruder, making nervous eye contact with my youngest son and not knowing what this woman was digging for in her backpack (was it a gun? a knife? something else?), I can’t help but wonder about Paul Pelosi and his own thought process.
Was Paul Pelosi, like me, operating on pure, adrenaline-fueled instinct? Had he, too, initially tried to reason with his intruder? Had he felt as certain as I did that emergency intervention was the only way to get away from this individual?
Within the first two minutes of meeting my intruder, it was clear that she was mentally unstable.
She insisted that I was opera singer Reneé Fleming, and that I needed to go upstairs quickly and change my clothes before leaving for a performance that evening.
It’s remaarkable what our brains can do when life is suddenly thrown off kilter. Knowing almost immediately that the woman standing before me was an intruder, my primary instinct was to protect my children and my home and myself.
And yet…
I also felt a strong sense of compassion.
• Who was this woman who looked so “normal” and “kind” and “friendly”?
• How had she gotten to the point of walking into a stranger’s home and putting food in their refrigerator?
• What went through her mind to convince her I was not who I said I was?
When my efforts to clear up her confusion went nowhere, I recognized how deeply confused she was about reality and that it was futile to “force” her to see my point of view. Accepting this, I knew my safest next step was to encourage her to leave.
But she wouldn’t.
As her agitation escalated and she went for her backpack that’s when I called for help whe she was distracted. I feared that she’d pull out a knife or a gun or a rope and use it on me or, worse, the children.
Thankfully, I was able to convince my intruder to walk outside with me to walk our puppy.
The moment the police squad cars pulled up, the woman and I were standing on my front porch. As the police exited their cars and approached us, I turned around and went back inside with all the kids. I shut the door behind us, locked it, and watched from the window as the woman screamed and spat at the officers.
They nevertheless spoke to her calmly, searched her backpack, then encouraged her to return home. They did not put her in a squad car. They simply told her to go home.
As she walked down the sidewalk, screaming over her shoulder at them, I wondered if she’d do this to someone else.
The police asked if I wanted to press charges, and I declined. The woman didn’t strike me as malicious. She was clearly struggling with mental illness.
Now that she was gone, I stood in my home, shaking with relief that we’d come through the incident relatively unharmed. I gathered the kids and we talked through what had just happened.
Some of my kids’ friends made comments like, “That lady was CRAZY!” and “What a LOONY-BIRD!”
I did my best to explain that she seemed to be suffering from mental illness, that it was likely out of her control, and that the police did an incredible job treating her not with aggression but with compassion.
Later, I reached out to our Chief of Police. I wanted to understand how the officers had diffused the situation so swiftly.
Commander Jay Parrott, Executive Officer/Media Relations, Office of the Chief of Police of Evanston, wrote back three days later on May 12, 2014:
“All police personnel have training in dealing with the mentally ill. Sometimes it's better to allow them to walk to their destination. It really depends, but often, being placed in a police vehicle — which has a cage — is not the most desirable to anyone, especially one with a mental issue. We had no other calls with the woman, which tells me that the decision seemed to be appropriate for the officer. We always try to deescalate the situation, and is very often successful.”
To all the emergency dispatchers out there, I don’t know if you need to hear this today, but on behalf of all of us who’ve ever reached out during unnerving, unfamiliar, or seemingly unsafe circumstances, thank you for hearing us. Thank you for your steadiness, your focus, and your attention to our concerns. Thank you for following your instincts and for taking our calls seriously. Thank you for sending help our way. While you may not always learn how thing turn out, I’m here to remind you that your actions — and your impact — often save lives and change them for the better.