On a recent Friday night, while many were kicking off the weekend with an evening on the town, Jenyne Wells waited for the phone to ring.
As a 911 call-taker at SunComm, Yakima County’s emergency dispatch center, she was waiting for anyone needing help. It would not be long.
“A young girl is being forced into a van,” a woman caller said, speaking through an interpreter. The abductors are fighting and are known to carry guns, the woman said.
Wells calmly but authoritatively asks the woman to describe the vehicle and assures her police are on the way. All the while, she’s typing bursts of information that are transmitted to computer screens in the responding police car, as well as police dispatchers who are sitting on the other end of the center.