JACKSON HOLE, WYO – For Alexandra ‘Alex’ Harper—cool, calm and collected is how she rolls. Some of it is in her DNA. Some of it has been trained into her on the job as a Teton County dispatcher.
The imperturbable Harper has probably heard it all at this point. When the phone rings or the police band radio crackles to life, she never knows what is about to go down but handles each incident with a level of poise that immediately puts everyone around her at ease. But when the emergency dispatcher recently found herself on the other end of the 911 call, even she was surprised at how composed she was.
“911, what is the nature of your emergency?” How many times has Harper said those words and waited for a panicked voice on the other end of the line? With a calmness that belies her 30 years, Harper regularly disseminates crucial information and gets police, fire, or medical to where they need to go. All at two in the morning when most of us are fast asleep.
The Modesto, California transplant arrived to Jackson nearly two years ago. She was hired on with dispatch, using her extensive experience back home doing the same thing.
On her way to work the nightshift Tuesday, Harper pulled out of her place in Bondurant around 6pm and headed into the Hoback Canyon.
Before long, she watched as an oncoming truck negotiated a curve far ahead. She could see the headlights in front of her suddenly take an odd angle. Something was wrong. The headlights appeared to cross the center line and then become taillights. Over the guardrail the truck went. When Harper arrived at the spot, there was nothing.
Harper parked at a pullout near Stinking Springs, grabbed a flashlight and jogged back to the spot on the highway where she saw the truck disappear. For about a hundred feet, Harper walked the guardrail, shining the light down into the ink-black abyss. Nothing. No sound. No one else even passing by on the road.
“Did I imagine it?” Harper thought.
Then she caught a glimpse of the truck. It was in the Hoback River. She called out.
A man answered and Harper was again on the job as a 911 operator, asking all the right questions.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“Is anyone else with you?”
“Can you make it up here on your own?”
Harper asked as she started down about a third of the way to the water.
“It was very dark and steep. I didn’t want to become the next victim,” Harper said.
With no cell service in the canyon, Harper played it safe until she saw the man scramble up the embankment to her. He was wet. They both were freezing in the cold.
“I gave him the once over as best I could in that situation and asked him where he wanted to go,” Harper said.
It turns out the man, in his mid-40s Harper guessed, lived in Bondurant as well. She cranked up the heat and drove him back home. Harper said she started a relaxed conversation with the man to ease his nerves and try to ascertain whether he might be more injured than was immediately evident.
Once back in coverage, Harper made the call she has taken so many times in her career.
“I called the direct line rather than 911 because I knew a 911 call would go to Sublette [County] and I didn’t want them to rush to get up there,” she said.
Harper explained the situation, arranged for a Highway Patrol Trooper to pay the crash victim a visit at his home and take care of the crashed pickup and then started again into work. “Oh, and I’ll be a little late for work,” she added.
“When you are in that situation but you are not the ‘one,’ there is an adrenalin rush,” Harper said, adding that she can better appreciate what first responders go through as she is giving them information over the radio.
It was a ‘right place at the right time’ blessing for the man who slid off the road. In a quiet canyon that sees little night traffic, things could have played out much differently.
“No one driving by would have seen that wreck from the highway that night,” Harper said.
