Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Roanoke County's lead communications officer, Donna Rigney (right), shares a laugh with Roanoke County Assistant Police Chief Donna Furrow (left) during her retirement party. Rigney retired Monday after 30 years as a dispatcher with Roanoke County.

Editor's note: Donna Rigney, a retired Roanoke County lead communications officer, is 55. This online story has been updated from the original print version to correct the error.

One of the most ghastly emergencies to which Donna Rigney ever sent ambulances and a helicopter was at a farm in Catawba where a farmer's left leg was shredded to pieces by a tool he was using to dig holes. Rigney picked up the phone when the farmer's brother dialed 911 that day, and for three hours she sat before six computers in Roanoke County's dispatch office, sending crews who saved the man's life.

Rigney hung up the emergency phone for the last time Monday after 30 years of dispatching Roanoke County officers and firefighters to police chases and house fires. Her work in the January 2005 farm emergency garnered her department a recognition from the American Red Cross and is an example of how seasoned emergency dispatchers are instrumental in keeping people safe.

"I think that after the years you just go on autopilot and automatically do what is needed of you," Rigney said. "Each situation is different, but you do whatever you can to help."

Rigney, 55, and one of few dispatchers to serve for three decades in Southwest Virginia, broke a trend with her long tenure. Keeping dispatchers for that long is a challenge: According to the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International, 17 percent of dispatchers left their jobs in 2005.

Many centers still "do not have appropriate staffing levels needed to handle the workload/call volume," said Loredanna Elsberry, services manager with APCO International, in an e-mail. "This could be attributed to turnover or lack of funding."

When Rigney joined the dispatch office in 1979, gasoline cost 86 cents per gallon, and the most popular TV show was M*A*S*H. Back then, the office didn't have the rigorous yearlong training program it does now -- dispatchers learned as the calls came in and they asked the person next to them what to do. (And, as they still do now, they worked irregular schedules that perpetually changed from night to day.)

"It was so stressful because there is so much to learn," Rigney said. "You learned the hard way, but you learned."

A job that requires a person to talk to a child who has been abused, or a senior citizen having a heart attack, or a person whose house is burning, naturally, can harden the soul. The dispatcher's role is to keep the people in the community -- and the emergency responders who serve them -- safe.

Rigney never served during a shift when an officer or a firefighter was seriously injured. A city dispatcher who worked when Roanoke police Officer Bryan Lawrence was assaulted and left unconscious last year heard about Rigney's streak and said, "Gosh, she is lucky." Over the years it remained Rigney's biggest occupational fear.

"What stresses me out is if you think one of the officers might be in danger," Rigney said. "There's no way to know what the officer is getting into in a traffic stop or in a domestic dispute."

Rigney is a curly-haired blonde who smiles a lot even though her job made her extraordinarily cautious. Earlier this year, she called the Salem dispatch office herself when a suspicious man outside a bank asked her for gas money. She looked the man up and down, mentally writing down a description of his hat, jacket and pants, and when she got to her car dialed 911.

When she talks about the episode she thinks of Ted Bundy, the serial killer from the 1970s who baited some of his victims by claiming to be hurt. "It makes you stop and think," she said. "I wouldn't want to be one of the girls who helped him."

Rigney's older sister, Yvonne Vest, explained why Rigney stuck with the stressful job over the years. While working for the government affords stable benefits, Vest said, her sister is a woman who, in first grade, gave her jacket to a classmate who didn't have one.

"Her joy is to give things to people," Vest said.

And Rigney stayed on even though her colleagues teased her many times over her extreme fear of mice. Once, a co-worker dangled a rubber mouse down a hallway as Rigney walked by, then jumped and clutched onto the arm of a friend next to her, screaming, "There's a mouse! There's a mouse!"

During a going away party last week, Roanoke County Assistant Police Chief Donna Furrow, who got her start as a dispatcher, joked about it.

"I was going to bring a mouse for memory's sake," Furrow said. "But I decided I wanted Donna to let me live a little bit longer."