We have shared several stories with you from our amazing emergency dispatchers in Baytown as part of National Telecommunicator Week. We have one more to share with you. It comes from someone who has helping others in her blood.
Timara Simmons, who has been working as a dispatcher for four years for the City of Baytown, comes from a family of first responders.
She said, “My dad has been a police officer for over 20 years and my mother has been a nurse for the same amount of time. It’s safe to say they share the same interests of wanting to do their parts to keep the community safe.”
Timara, like other telecommunicators, is laser focused on each unpredictable call.
She said, “I am thinking of helping the person on the other end as much as possible. Knowing that I have positively impacted someone on one of the worst days of their lives keeps me going.”
Timara loves that her job keeps her on her toes and that every day is different. One of the memorable calls she had was back on October 4, 2019.
“I had only been out of training for about a week and received a call about a woman going into labor,” she said, “About a minute into the call, I learned that she was having twins. I talked her through the delivery until responders arrived to take over. As a twin and a freshly-released telecommunicator, I was very proud to had been a part of something so special.”
Timara plans on doing this job for at least 20 more years. While she says the job is “stressful but rewarding,” she doesn’t consider herself a hero.
Timara said, “I am human and I believe that keeping that in mind allows me to be empathetic, relatable, and strong for each caller.”
She ended with, “It is an honor to be on the other end of that phone or headset serving my community.”
A special thank you to Timara, Markeshia Washington, Sharonda Clay, and Roderick Jackson for sharing their stories as great telecommunicators. We appreciate the work all of you and your co-workers perform on a daily basis.