Celebrating the voices you hear in your time of need

This is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week, a time to appreciate the voices on the other end of the phone, when you call in an emergency.

There are more than 200,000 of them nationwide. They are the dispatchers, whose job it is to quickly and accurately pass your information on to whichever agency is best suited to help you.

Warren County Sheriff's Captain Timothy Robinson says dispatchers deal with a number of agencies, including "Emergency Management Technical Rescue Team, the Smiths Grove Police, Woodburn Police, and the Sheriff's Office."

And WKU PD Public Information Officer Tim Grays says. "So they're the unsung heroes, right? They're that first calming voice that the individual is expecting to hear on that phone line."

Dispatchers deal with the stress of making the right split-second decisions, in life-or-death situations, every day. That's why some officers call them the backbone of the agency.