As Warren County residents settle into the holiday weekend, dispatchers, among plenty of others, will be hard at work.

Regardless of holidays, someone has to be on the other end of the 911 phone anytime someone calls for help.

“It’s not an easy shift, and the job is not easy,” said Chuck Tate, interim director of the E-911 Center.

The county’s longest-serving dispatcher is Bobby Rufus, who has held a position answering 911 calls and relaying information to emergency personnel for six and a half years.

“If you’re going to celebrate the holidays, you’re going to do it before or after it happens. They tell us that when we start,” Rufus said. “We accept it because of the love of the community and helping them.”

Dispatchers provide a vital link between the public and emergency services, he said. They are “the first first-responders” who try to keep callers calm in emergency situations while gathering information for police and fire services.

“It’s like a rollercoaster. You never know what you’re going to be handling. It’s not made for everybody,” Rufus said.

For Rufus, the rollercoaster ride is what keeps him going.

“It’s something different every day. You never know what you’re going to deal with when you pick up a phone. It’s not the same routine over and over,” he said.

Rufus has spent most of his time at E-911 working on the night shift — 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. It is certainly the busiest 12 hours for calls to 911. Peak hours, he said, are typically before midnight on weekdays and between midnight and 2 a.m. on weekends.

Callers can sometimes be difficult to gather information from when under the duress of an emergency situation, Rufus said.

“All the questions we are for a reason. Most of them think its just to aggravated them,” he said.

He started working at the E-911 center at the encouragement of a friend who had worked there previously.

“They had asked me to sit in and take the test,” Rufus said.

Long before he began working at dispatch, Rufus had an interest in emergency services. He began volunteering with Fisher Ferry fire department when he was 15, and now at age 43, Rufus is assistant chief.