Early on Monday morning, May 17, 2021, a female called 9-1-1 reporting she had driven into floodwaters on Missouri Highway E near Strasburg, Missouri. Communications Shift Supervisor Jessica Vogel and Communications Officer Courtney Peregrine were on duty at the time of the call. Jessica answered the call. The woman said she was able to get herself out of the vehicle and onto the roof. While phone reception was not perfect, the dispatchers were able to understand that she was in water. The two communications officers were able to use mapping technologies to determine the caller’s location was in a river.
Jessica stayed on the phone with the caller for approximately 40 minutes, reassuring her that help was on the way. Courtney dispatched police, fire, EMS, rescue boats and other available resources by radio and by phone to the caller’s location. These actions allowed Jessica to concentrate on the panicked female who was holding to a branch and her phone. As the call went on, the caller said she was starting to feel hypothermic. Jessica and Courtney worked tirelessly to make sure the caller kept talking to them about her family. Jessica maintained a calm, reassuring voice throughout the call, trying everything possible to encourage the desperate woman to continue to struggle and to hang on as the water continued to rise up to her neck.
Deputy Sheriff Spender Teegarden risked his own safety by wading through waist-high water in the direction of the caller provided by dispatch. Courtney had the deputy shine his flashlight until the caller saw it. When found, the woman was still hanging onto a tree branch with fast-flowing water continuing to rise around her. She was over a quarter of a mile from the roadway and the truck she escaped from was nowhere to be seen. Responders were able to throw a rope to her and then pull her from the tree through the rushing water. She did not suffer any injury.
The patience, compassion, and fast actions displayed by communications officers Vogel and Peregrine were critical to Deputy Teegarden successfully locating and rescuing this woman. Her life was saved that day because of them!
