The Organization of Public Safety Telecommunicators is honoring dispatchers this week in the Sacramento region.
All public safety communications centers in the counties of Sacramento, Placer, Yolo, El Dorado and Sutter are participating in the special week, and an awards banquet honoring two local dispatchers is planned Saturday at the Radisson Hotel in Sacramento.
Jennifer Collins, a Rocklin Police Department communications manager and a banquet organizer, said the week is for celebrating "the hard work and professionalism that communications personnel display on a daily basis."
"They are the silent heroes that are the first line of communication during an individual's time of emergency," Collins said in an e-mail to The Bee.
More details from Art Campos:
At the banquet, which is sold out, the "dispatcher of the year" award will be given to Carla Rose Lewis of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.
Lewis was working the radio channel when Deputy Vu Nguyen was shot and killed on Dec. 19.
Sacramento County Sheriff John McGinness said in a written statement that Lewis maintained her poise and grace while controlling the channel "during one of the most confusing and disturbing incidents of the Sheriff's Department's history."
Receiving a special life-saving award will be Laura Macias, a dispatcher with the Sacramento Regional Fire/EMS Communications Center.
Macias was off duty last June with her family at a restaurant in downtown Sacramento when a man fell unconscious and not breathing.
She began CPR and continued the efforts until Sacramento city fire personnel arrived. The patient, who had heart problems, was taken to a local hospital and survived.
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