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EDITOR’S NOTE: In recognition of National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, the Daily News will be highlighting some of the dispatchers at Troup County 911 who are the first, first response when emergency help is needed. Today we are featuring Dispatcher Keisha McCrory.

 Keisha McCrory has been with Troup County 911 for just under eight years. She said she came in almost eight years ago and started on the night shift taking calls and did some training and moved on from there.

“I became a trainer for a little period of time, but I decided just the dispatching portion is what I love,” McCrory.

McCrory said she likes dispatching because it allows her to help without being on the front lines.

“I like it. I feel like everybody is not able to do some of the stuff on the street like seeing all the blood and the guts and things like that,” McCrory said. “I like being able to help from a different side of things.”

She said being able to help, even from far away is rewarding.

“It’s very much rewarding. I always felt like I wanted to do something good but just never really knew where my place was. When I started here, I definitely didn’t know for sure if I was going to be able to make it through that training process. But after I got things figured out and got settled in, I really felt like I had found something I really loved, really just by surprise,” McCrory said.

McCrory said when she first started one of her biggest struggles was understanding the different ways that people talk.

“Certain people say things differently and just trying to decipher things and learning well, that means the same thing,” McCrory said. “They’re saying the same thing. They’re just saying it a different way or just even understanding how people talk. People on the county radio tend to be a little bit more country versus our city officers.”

“After so long, it just comes like night and day to you,” she said.

For many dispatch officers, starting out is a trial by fire for their emotions. McCrory said her start was no different. She said she struggled to start but received help from her mother.

“I most definitely did [struggle emotionally], but I will just say that I had a praying mother,” McCrory said. “She really stayed on that journey with me. As I’m coming home I’d say, ‘Mom, I don’t think I can do this.’ And she’s like, ‘Look how much you’ve been through throughout your life. You can stick this out.’”

“She was right. It just worked out and ended up working out really well,” McCrory said.

McCrory said one of her proudest moments was during the Sunny Point standoff a couple of years back.

“It was right at shift change when we received a about the suspect. He had two children inside of the residence with him when it first started and one of the children called and said that their dad was having a seizure because he had epilepsy pretty bad,” McCrory said.

“I got the kids to go outside to get them away because I didn’t know if he actually even had a seizure or if he was just trying to get the police back out there,” McCrory said. “That was very rewarding for me, especially with what happened with the aftermath of the house.”