A call-centre consultant in Moncton is being hailed as a hero for keeping her composure during an emergency last summer.
Jennifer Daigle was taking her first call of the day on Aug. 27 when the woman on the other end of the line admitted she was trying to add minutes to her phone so she could call a crisis hotline.
“She broke down. She literally just started sobbing,” recalls Daigle, who has worked as a phone-tech support consultant for eight years.
“That’s when I said ‘it’s OK, we’ll get the minutes on. We’re going to take care of this,’ and she said ‘I’m going to harm myself. I need to talk to somebody now.’”
Daigle quickly alerted her manager, who called 911 and tried to direct them to the woman’s location. Daigle spent the next 45 minutes talking to the woman while her co-workers silently watched the situation unfold.
“Everything else went away. There was no nervousness,” says Daigle. “I knew Mike was on the other side, helping me feel so assured. Then I was able to focus my concentration on her.”
Her calm demeanour in the face of a life-and-death situation didn’t go unnoticed; Daigle won an award from her company and was given $10,000 to donate to the charity of her choice.
Fittingly, she selected the Chimo Hotline – a crisis hotline in New Brunswick.
Chimo’s executive director, Nikita Moriarity, says the non-profit group was stunned by the donation.
“She actually called our 1-800 helpline and a volunteer had answered and at first I thought it was some kind of scam,” admits Moriarity. “She just got a call and they were saying ‘I’d like to donate $10,000 to your organization.”
“I admire them, I really do,” says Daigle, who presented the cheque to the organization on Monday.
“I think that has got to be the hardest job that’s out there, along with 911 operators. You have to have compassion. You have to understand that everyone has a story.”
The money will go towards educating intervenors – something that is badly needed as the number of calls to the hotline increases.
“Just in the province of New Brunswick, we take over 12,000 calls a year,” says Moriarity. “You just never know what you’re going to get when you say ‘hello.’”
Due to privacy laws, Daigle never learned what happened to the woman on the other end of that fateful call, but says she’s hoping for the best, and hoping her donation will save more lives.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Cami Kepke
