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OTTAWA COUNTY — For those who work as 911 operators, it’s not a matter of if they’re going to hear something traumatic, but when.
“Not everybody can do this job,” said Megan Ross, who works as a dispatcher for Ottawa County. “Some people can, some people can’t, and there’s no middle ground. When we pick up the phone, we don’t know what we’re going to get.”
Ross has spent the last 16 years working for Ottawa County Central Dispatch, acting as the very first responder in countless emergencies. She said when you’re taking hundreds of calls a day like that, resilience is the key to being good at the job.
But about eight years ago, Ross responded to a call where an officer was killed in the line of duty, and that affected her in ways she had never planned for.
“It tore me up,” she said. “I went into a real nasty time. I was never suicidal, but I went into a real bad space where I was questioning everything I did on
