"Another call ... was from a suicidal caller. I talked with him while another dispatcher had law enforcement en route. He didn’t want to listen to anything I said so I worked very hard to let him know it was safe to talk to me and to keep him talking, the whole time praying that the gun I heard him cock next to the phone would not go off. He explained he had been arrested the day before and his wife left him because of it and he didn’t want to go back to jail. I was able to keep him talking and almost had him calmed down and believing there is a day after tomorrow and things get better, when our officer got to the scene and everything started going downhill from there, because the officer that arrived on scene was the same officer that had him arrested him the day before. [The caller] went into a rage then and swore he was going to kill my officer then himself."

Read "That’s What We Do" from Heard County 911, and share your own story at npstw.org/tell-us-your-story/