First Responder Appreciation Day will be held Saturday at South Escalante Park in Boulder City. From the “first” first responders — dispatchers — to the “final” first responders — records clerks and fire clerical — first responders are present 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond and serve residents and visitors in Boulder City.
You may not find anything good about receiving a speeding ticket until you must make an urgent call as you are on scene with a child hit by a vehicle speeding through a school zone.
It may seem frivolous when you hear of officers citing someone for smoking a little weed until your drug test comes back positive and you are fired because of secondhand smoke.
Anger may be your first reaction when an item you purchased online is seized as evidence of a burglary until someone steals your grandmother’s wedding ring and it’s sold for drug money.
It’s easy to look at a situation from only one perspective and see what appears to be a flaw, not knowing the entirety of the circumstances. From the lack of clerks in a department store to the particulars of your chosen profession, there are always “sideline quarterbacks” who are first to point out a better way to do it.
As a 14-year member of the first responder team in Boulder City, I can assure you that, almost daily, we are tasked with things that most citizens are not exposed to. These are the people who help make your city a wonderful place to live and work.
We are there when a person loses his or her battle with depression, falls from a rooftop, comes home to find belongings stolen, takes a last breath, has his or her only form of transportation destroyed. We are there to sit with the victim of a battery, to give a death notification to a mother and father or to keep the peace while a decades-long marriage is dissolved.
These men and women do their job, every day, so regular people don’t have to suffer (alone) the lasting consequences of their own, or another person’s, bad decisions. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a reality and, most of the time, there is no time to recover before the next emergency hits.
If you have ever had to use the magic number (911), the urgent but not emergency number (311), the regular number (702-293- 9224) or walked into the station with a request (1005 Arizona St.), this is the perfect opportunity to be part of the solution. Join us and our fellow citizens to show our appreciation for each other and assist in opening the lines of communication in making this town (and country), once again, the greatest place to live.
Tina Ransom is a dispatcher with Boulder City Police Department. She is coordinator of the Boulder City Citizen’s Academy.