TORRINGTON – Last week, Brenda Miller celebrated serving the community of Goshen County for the last 20 years as a Communications Officer with the Torrington Police Department. Although Miller never really intended to become the calm voice on the end of the line, she found her place answering 911 calls.

“Brenda has seen, or at least heard, pretty much everything you can imagine over her many years of service,” the department released in an online statement. “Despite the highs, and sometimes lows, she still shows up for every shift with a smile, a great sense of humor, and a willingness to help others in their time of need.”

This wasn’t always Miller’s plan, but life changes prompted a different career. Miller never expected to work in the dispatch center. 

“I had just gone through a divorce, and I had to have some way to support my kids,” Miller explained. “Being a single parent, I couldn’t find anything. I had to work two different jobs. I knew I needed to have insurance for them, and I knew the only way I could support my kids was to find a ‘big girl job’ so I ended up applying here,” Miller said. “I didn’t think I was going to get it and I got it. I was surprised.”

Miller works twelve-hour shifts in the dispatch center where she spends the majority of her day attentively watching multiple computer screens, answering multiple phones and communicating with first responders and law enforcement officers. Miller confirmed, her position in law enforcement has indeed changed her life because each call is different.

“You think that people are going to be really hurt and they walk away from stuff, and you don’t expect it,” Miller explained. “And then you think they are going to walk away because they are okay, and they don’t. You can only do what you can do to try to help.”

Miller explained she has answered many traumatic calls in 20 years, some more personal than others, but what keeps her going her desire to help others and a little bit of ADHD. 

“To be honest, I think I have ADHD and I think that’s what it is. Because it’s like, ‘Oh, squirrel. Oh, where was I?’ I don’t remember what I was doing. So, it’s like my concentration isn’t just on that and I think that helps,” Miller explained. “I think that knowing you did something to help somebody. You can always go back to that.”

“My kid’s dad, he was a deputy, and I took the call where he got, it was the officer down call. He didn’t get shot or anything, but a city officer called on the radio and said, ‘Officer down, officer down.’ That was a defining moment I think because it was within the first three years that I was here that happened,” Miller explained. “My first day on the job we had a bomb threat. It was just strange. It started out like that.”

Of course, not every day is as strange as Miller’s first day in the dispatch office, but she is thankful to have a supportive team of coworkers, she explained. 

“It helps to have other people to talk to,” Miller explained. “It helps to, ‘Hey, have you ever had this (type of call)? Yeah, I had that. Well, what happened?’” Miller said. “Then to know, did anything change? No matter what you did it wouldn’t have changed the situation. If you know that, because we have had people that it didn’t matter what I did (they didn’t survive).”

Miller recalls a gunshot fatality involving a youth where the victim succumbed to injuries. 

“There was a kid that was shot, and I had people in the air right away. I had everything and it didn’t matter,” Miller explained. “He was already gone.”

Miller agrees, regardless of how trained she and the first responders are, life and death are in a far larger set of hands than our own. 

“It’s definitely a lifestyle change for sure. The job made me aware of things that I wasn’t aware of before. If you don’t do it, and you don’t do it, you don’t really know. It opened my eyes to many things,” Miller explained. “It also made me aware of just how kind, just how helping somebody one time, how it can change their life. Sometimes people just need a little bit of kindness in order for them to see something. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how kind you are.”

Working with the general public, under ordinary circumstances, can be challenging however, Miller interacts with the public on possibly their worst day, which sometimes can play a toll on morale. 

“I am pretty calloused. I never used to be. Like things would hurt me and hurt my feelings. We joke, ‘Oh you hurt that one feeling I have left,’” Miller joked. 

Miller explained playing a vital role in the community by helping others when they are in need is her favorite part of her job. 

“It’s helping people. It’s like their lives are at their worst, I’ve got to still be at my best. No matter what,” Miller explained. 

Miller explained one of her more personal calls was when she was training a new dispatcher. Miller received a call from her daughter, stating the girl’s father was not breathing. Miller trained her coworker while being directly connected to the emergency caller. 

“It doesn’t matter, you may think you will never get a call like that. It isn’t a matter of ‘if’. It’s a matter of ‘when’. As long as you’re in this position, there is going to be something,” Miller explained. 

For Miller and other fellow communication officers, more often than not, after the call is disconnected, the story is over, and the outcome of the emergency call is unknown.

“It’s just one of those things. I have accepted that I’m just not going to know (the outcome of a call),” Miller explained. “There’s occasionally, you find out that you helped somebody. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen. Sometimes people come in and say, ‘I just want to thank you guys. You guys really helped me out.’”

Miller offered a bit of advice for young dispatchers beginning their careers and those who may be interested in a career in communications. 

“It is something that you have to know that the time away from your family and stuff like that, you’re helping a bigger picture,” Miller explained. “Everything you do has a chain reaction, like a ripple effect. If somebody has a wreck, you don’t know that might be your kid next time that gets ran into or gets killed so you have to do everything you can that you’re supposed to be doing or what needs to be done to help other people out,” Miller explained. “Even the negative effects of that have a ripple effect. Just beware that when you come in here, it’s not about you. It’s how it’s going to affect everybody else.”

“We want people to like us. We want people to think to accept us. We’re not there to harm them,” Miller explained. “We are here to make the world a better place and a lot of times people don’t see that part of it because of how it affects them, the negative part of what’s going on in their life. So, they don’t see the positive effect it could have on the community or people in general. Even on their own families, the positive effect is way bigger than what they can see.” 

“The thing that takes me back the most with Brenda is her ability to show up with a good attitude and a smile on her face every day, having done tough stuff for 20 years,” Torrington Chief of Police, Matt Johnson said. “She is kind to everybody. She is pleasant. She is a pleasure to work with. She has a contagious sense of humor.” 

“Life is very delicate,” Miller humbly said.