WASHINGTON — For 26 years, Glenna Oliver has put on her headset and answered the call when the Chino community needed her.

“I was pregnant with my first child, and I worked in the field as an EMT,” Oliver explained, sitting at her desk at the Chino Police Department. “They had to put me in dispatch — when you’re pregnant, you can’t work in the field. And once I went in, I never came out.”

Oliver is a public safety dispatch supervisor for the city of Chino, a job she compares to being the conductor or an orchestra.

“We’re the conductors and all of the different instruments would be the police, the fire, the EMS providers, even city yards, staff, hospital staff. We direct it all,” she explained. “We’re literally the first to respond to any incident, whether it’s an emergency or nonemergency.”

Despite being the first voice the caller hears in an emergency, 911 dispatchers are not considered first responders by the Office of Management and Budget, something former dispatcher Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., wants to change.

“Without the proper classification, we cannot empower them to receive the money that they need in order to have proper training, improve their skills, and most importantly, to be [there] for you, the day that you need them the most,” Torres said during a news conference reintroducing her bill, the 911 Supporting Accurate Views of Emergency Services, or SAVES, Act.

Torres, the first 911 dispatcher elected to Congress, said she knows all too well the toll the job can take.

“I took a 911 call, early in my career, that changed my life completely,” Torres said. “It was a call from an 11-year-old girl. Her name is Yahaira — was Yahaira. When I answered the call, the only thing that I could hear was thumping, really loud,” she said, tapping the lectern for effect. “Screams, horrific screams — followed by five shots. Five shots that ended her life.”

Torres said it is that call that pushed her into the political arena to be a “voice of those voiceless victims.” 

“Our bill is a common sense bill, and it won’t cost taxpayers anything. This is a small change. A small change that has broad support from the 911 community,” Torres said, referencing endorsements from the National Emergency Number Association, International Association of Fire Fighters, National Association of State 911 Administrators and others.

The bill as written would direct the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to update its classification for 911 dispatchers as a protective service within the Standard Occupational Classification catalog. Other occupations under the protective service status include police, firefighters and other frontline safety occupations. It’s co-sponsored by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., who has co-sponsored the bill with Torres since 2019.

Spectrum News reached out to the office for comment on the bill’s claims that reclassification would not cost taxpayers, but a spokesperson said their office could not discuss it, as it is pending legislation.

Back in Chino, Oliver’s department is recognized by the city as first responders, and has been reaping the benefits as such. But since most dispatchers aren’t so lucky, she said the bill could be life-changing if passed.

“We are in a classification that’s not necessarily a protected class. We’re classifying with other perhaps secretarial staff, other office staff,” she explained. “Putting us into that protected class gives us the opportunity to move forward with protecting our dispatchers with presumptive illness or injury on the job. PTSD, which dispatchers suffer from, pretty significantly. They would be treated and it would be workman’s comp related.”

It may also help increase studies into the deaths of dispatchers, an area Oliver said is desperately needed, but has been lacking.

“We need those studies. We need to be navigating this epidemic of first responder suicide and being able to put the dispatchers in with the rest of the first responders can literally save their lives,” Oliver said.