When Joann Ryan answers the phone, it's usually bad news. Car accidents, shootings, stabbings, rapes, family fights and drug overdoses are about all she hears about.
So the veteran dispatcher for the Salt Lake City Police Department was surprised a few years ago when a panicked man called needing help delivering his neighbor's baby. He'd dropped by the woman's apartment to say hello, and it was too late for an ambulance — the baby was coming. Now.
"OK," JoAnn told him in a soothing voice, "We're going to do this together. The first thing I want you to do is take off her pants."
"Say what?"
"You'll have to remove her pants so the baby can come out."
"Oh."
Thus began the most memorable 911 call JoAnn has taken in 15 years on the job. Somehow she managed to keep the man calm as he followed her directions and delivered a healthy baby girl. It was more than JoAnn bargained for when she went to work for the police department, and certainly more than the caller bargained for as a next-door neighbor.
"But it was nice to have a happy ending — to have a call end in something positive," says JoAnn, laughing at the memory. That phone call came with a bonus, she says. Somewhere out there, there is a little girl with "JoAnn" for a middle name.
Hoping to share a few life-and-death stories and remind the public about the dos and don'ts of dialing 911, JoAnn joined me for a Free Lunch of Chinese takeout during a recent lunch break on the swing shift, where she dispatches police four days a week.
If you're ever in doubt whether to dial 911, then by all means call, she says. "We've had people report stabbings and robberies on the non-emergency line, and that just floors me," says JoAnn. "Believe it or not, a lot of people don't really know what 911 is for."
Several people even persist in dialing the emergency line to ask for the correct time and latest sports scores. JoAnn also gets late-night calls from lonely senior citizens, looking for somebody to talk to.
"That's so sad to me," she says. "I'll ask them if everything is all right, if they've taken their medication. They dial 911 because they know that somebody will always be there."
Although her job is stressful and unpredictable, JoAnn thrives on living minute by minute. When she answers the phone, she's ready for any challenge, from instructing a caller on how to deliver CPR to helping a homeless person who's lost his sleeping bag.
The worst calls, of course, are those with a violent edge: shootings, robberies and family fights. "When you can hear children crying in the background and things breaking, it gets to you," says JoAnn. "All you can do is try and keep the person on the line and get the police rolling."
Even on Thanksgiving and Mother's Day, tragedy is unfolding somewhere in the city. JoAnn used to work the day shift until one Christmas she took two calls about infants who had died of SIDS.
"Calls like that come in the morning when parents go in to wake their kids up," she says. "I couldn't handle the heartbreak. Now I get calls about older people who have been found dead, and that's no great thing, either. But at least they've had a chance to live their lives."
Fortunately, there is always a bit of humor to change the pace.
"One night, I had a call from a guy new to Utah, wondering why dozens of strangers were camped out in his front yard," recalls JoAnn. "I had to tell him, 'Hey, don't you know? You have one of the best seats in the house for the Days of '47 Parade.' "
Have a story? Let's hear it over lunch. E-mail your name, phone number and what you'd like to talk about to freelunch@desnews.com. You can also write me at the Deseret Morning News, P.O. Box 1257, Salt Lake City, UT 84110.