There’s no telling how many lives Edwin Green has helped save.

Green’s not in the field, but when someone’s having the worst day of their life, he’s on the other end of the phone ready to be the immediate first responder.

For his work as the unseen first responder, Green was recently awarded the Vicksburg-Warren County E-911 dispatcher of the year.

“It was a shock. I didn’t think I was going to get it. I was working toward it but didn’t think I was going to get it,” Green said.

Vicksburg Warren County E-911 training officer Shane Garrard said Green is a hard worker who is always looking to improve himself and the agency and was very deserving of the award.

“He’s a very bright, intelligent young guy,” Garrard said.

“He always wants to help individuals. That’s just where his mind’s at.”

Green is still relatively new but is considered somewhat of a veteran in terms of dispatching. In August, he will reach his third anniversary as an E-911 dispatcher. That feat in itself is somewhat of a rarity because of the stressful nature of the job and a turnover rate of about 20 to 30 percent every few years, interim E-911 Director Chuck Tate said.

“This is my first actual job. My cousin used to work here and was telling me about it. I thought it sounded fun. It was a challenge for me to learn six different screens at once but after you get in and get running and get your feet on the ground. I like it,” the 23-year-old Green said.

Work can and usually does get stressful at some point.

Callers often are dealing with personal, manmade or natural disasters. Some, if not most, are life or death situations. Yet, many in the public don’t understand the role of dispatchers, Green said.

“They don’t know our job is much harder than they think it is. We have to deal with people calling with their attitudes, the profanity that they used toward us. We have to let that not show over the radio to our officers. We have to maintain a level of calm at all times. That’s hard to do,” Green said.

In all it’s a very misunderstood role dispatchers play, Green said.

“It looks easy from the outside. If you look just from the outside you’re going to say that we answer phones and that’s it. You’re going to say that we have one of the laziest jobs, but that’s not what’s going on,” Green said.

Dispatchers must ask an array of questions to gather information for officers and firefighters. But while dispatchers are questioning callers, help is already on the way, which most callers do not understand, Green said.

“They think that we’re the ones responding. They don’t know what we’re pretty much here to get the officers there,” Green said. “If we hang up with them and the officer is on the way, they’ll call back here and ask why we’re not here yet.”

To wind down during the day, Green crochets blankets and scarves during downtime between calls.

“That’s mainly my stress relief. It doesn’t get stressful all the time, but every now and then you’ll have those moments,” Green said.