Veteran Chicago Police dispatcher is ready to hang up her headset after 40 years
CBS News Chicago often tells stories honoring our police officers and firefighters for saving lives, but rarely do we tell the stories of people who answer the call — the very first call.
Debra White has been taking those first calls in Chicago for 40 years, and she is a hero every day in our community.
When White first started working for the City of Chicago, the year was 1985. Ronald Reagan was just starting his second term as president, and Harold Washington was about halfway through his first term as Chicago mayor.
If you tuned in to Channel 2 back then, you would have seen Bill Kurtis, Walter Jacobson, Don Craig, and the late Harry Porterfield on the anchor desk in the middle of a bustling newsroom, reporters breaking down the spectacle and gridlock of Council Wars at City Hall, and sports director and former Chicago Bear Johnny Morris talking about his old team as they inched closer to the Super Bowl.
As for White, she was only 25 years old — and working at the old Chicago Police Headquarters at 1121 S. State St. as a police teletype operator.
"It was the way to communicate various messages throughout the Police Department," White said. "It was what you currently call now your mobile, faxes, your emails. But we had to give information via teletype machine, ticker tapes."
The teletypes were used to distribute such information as bulletins about suspects wanted in a crime.
White became a call-taker for emergency police calls in 1990, and a dispatcher four years later.
Forty years later, White is still answering the call — still as a police dispatcher with the Office of Emergency Management and Communications. She explained the experience of picking up the phone in that role.
"When the phone rings, it's automatically you answer it. You're ready. You're waiting," she said. "You could be calm, and you stay calm if there's a regular call, and your adrenaline can go up if it's of somebody screaming. So you hear somebody screaming, but you remain calm mentally, but emotionally it goes up and down with the callers."
White said remaining calm is key, whether the situation involves somebody screaming or something mundane.
"it's stressful, but you just have to remain calm," said White. "You think about the consequence. You're in the motion now. You're in the minute now."
Dispatchers like White provide a calming voice, and a lifeline in a time of need, for the people in Chicago and our police officers.
"Every call is different. Every job is different," White said. "It may have the same heading, but it has a different outcome."
Nicknamed "Digital Deb" by her coworkers, White also prides herself on being the call center photographer.
"She's our historian," said fellow dispatcher Minka Giles. "She keeps up with everything and everybody."
"She's probably got 100,000 pictures," said dispatcher William Sonntag.
White captures the memories as she works alongside those she calls family.
"She's just an overall amazing person, just overall. She does so much for everyone," said Giles. "Everybody's just blessed to know her."
"Every time I come to work, Deb reminds me how much I'm blessed to have this job and to be with her," said sontag. "She always helps me focus on happy things in life."
And now after 40 years, White is ready to hang up her headset.
"I wouldn't have wished another course in my life. I love the course I took — just very rewarding," she said. "It's a very rewarding situation to be able to help the unsung heroes behind the phone."
As far as what White plans to do next once she retires, she said she hopes to travel, and stay off the phone.
And as the aforementioned Mr. Porterfield would have said, police dispatcher Debra White is someone you should know.
