Glenview Dispatchers Who Helped Suicidal Woman Lying in Street to Receive Award

Three Glenview Public Safety dispatchers who helped save a suicidal woman’s life last year will receive a Glenview Civic Award for their work.

According to the nomination from Brent Reynolds, director of the Public Safety Department, events unfolded as follows on Jan 12, 2013 for Kirstin Stieglitz, Melinda Dragicevich and Bonnie Henning:

An emergency call came in from a woman on a cell phone asking for help but she immediately hung up without giving any more information. The dispatcher tried calling her back, but she didn’t answer.

After contacting the cell phone service provider, dispatchers were able to “ping” the phone to locate it, to Coronet Road, Central Road and then to Waukegan Road.

After continuing to call the number back, a dispatcher was finally able to get through to the woman. She said she was lost outside in the rain, couldn’t walk and was losing feeling in her extremities.

She said she was “lying next to a pole by a while fence and could see a street sign that had the letters “G-L-E” along with a sign with the word “Park.”

By using all this information, officers were able to find the woman at the corner of Glenview Road and Glenayre Drive, lying on the parkway grass. She was slightly frothing at the mouth and it was learned that she had taken an unknown amount of Tylenol in a suicide attempt.

“Whether it was taking the initial call, dispatching information to officers, or initiating the ping on the cell phone, these three telecommunicators worked together as a team in order for the victim to be successfully located and transported to the hospital for care,” Reynolds wrote in his nomination.

“We couldn’t have done it without each other. We all had different roles in finding her. We encountered an otherwise terrible situation and turned it into a positive,” Dragicevich said in a statement from the village. “You’re on a mission. Later you sit back and realize what you did.”

The award will be given out, along with others, at the 47th annual Glenview Civic Awards dinner April 25.

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