Stensland was recently honored for his part last year when a Hamilton County sheriff’s deputy was assaulted during a call.

“Last year in March, I got a call about 2:30 or three in the morning about a man walking around Kamrar,” Stensland said. “He was shouting obscene things, kind of yelling at himself, punching the road. We thought he was drunk.”

Stensland only had one deputy working at the time, Ryan Rupiper, who wanted to know if there were any Iowa state troopers in the area.

“There were not,” Stensland said. “I did let State Patrol know we had a call because, you always have to listen to your gut feeling. We just did not have a good feeling about this guy with only one deputy working.”

Stensland also made Webster City police aware of the situation, since Kamrar is close enough an officer could go from there if he needed help, Stensland said.

Those gut feelings turned out to be correct. Within five minutes, the deputy was attacked, Stensland said.

“The guy tried to steal his car, take his gun. He was tazed numerous times to no effect,” Stensland said. “He got hit in the face, broke his glasses, and within minutes I notified all agencies–basically, get there yesterday.

“It took quite a few people including EMTs, officers, to subdue the subject, and they finally got him subdued and taken to the hospital.”

The man was in a state of excited delirium, which can result from taking certain kinds of drugs like PCP or speed, said Stensland.

“You don’t feel any pain. You can get tazed 20 times and not even feel it,” he said.

Hamilton County and the Webster County Police Department use different dispatch centers, so Stensland had to coordinate with them. He was also talking with ISP’s dispatch in Des Moines.

“I was coordinating with three different dispatch centers,” he said. “So I was coordinating with Des Moines, and Webster City. They both have phenomenal dispatchers as well. Without proper communication, without proper understanding, help wouldn’t have got there.”

Stensland was awarded the 2017 Telecommunicator of the Year Award at the spring conference of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials in Des Moines.

Stensland was one of seven nominated throughout Iowa at the convention, which draws dispatchers from all 99 counties.

Stensland has been with Hamilton County since September 2015. Before that, he was a dispatcher for Webster City for about six months.

He’s always wanted to work in law enforcement, especially in a county setting. But he had never considered being one of the men and women in the communication center.

“I didn’t even know what dispatching was. I was bagging groceries before this,” Stensland said. “In the midst of applying to a bunch of law enforcement agencies for officer, deputy, I applied initially to Webster City.

“It was for a dispatcher job. I thought that could be interesting,” he said. “I’ve heard somewhat of what they do.”

Stensland got his criminal justice degree from Des Moines Area Community College, but said he had trouble finding a job.

“I was kind of striking out because I was too young,” he said. “Now working at the sheriff’s office has opened up a lot more avenues.”

Handling for both emergency calls and more routine sheriff’s office affairs, Stensland quickly had to learn about the many responsibilities of a dispatcher and that “there’s not a single file line of 911 calls.”

“You have four 911 calls going at the same time while your officer is on a traffic stop, while another officer goes out to assist a motorist. I never really saw myself being in a line of work where I have to think about 100 things at the same time.”

You also have to provide help to people who are having the worst day of their lives, he said.

“You can’t lose control of the call. If they are screaming at you, you have to stay professional. Be that calm voice, because if you’re calm you can calm people down.”

Any call where an officer gets hurt sticks with you, Stensland said.

And other types of calls stick in his mind as well.

“Definitely children calls,” he said. “Like if a child calls in about a parent not breathing, or they’re unconscious, those stick with you because the children are so innocent. They don’t know what’s going on, and you have to kind of get on their level with them.”

“Medical calls,” he added. “If it’s the wife of a man she’s been married to for 60 years, you can see them very distressed.

“On the good side of that, I’ve had calls where I helped someone deliver a baby,” he said. “We’ve had a baby born in the Dairy Queen parking lot. I’ve done pre-arrival instructions driving down the interstate. It’s been all over the place.”

He also gets less urgent calls, like when a caller dials 911 to complain his neighbor is mowing grass on his lawn.

“People calling in, they’re mad at their neighbor, so they bring up something they did how many years ago,” Stensland said.

To go from bagging groceries to his current duties, Stensland had to become a certified dispatcher through a 40-hour training class at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy.

He took 24 hours of emergency medical dispatch training, learning how to use cards that can guide him in what to say before paramedics arrive at a medical call.

“We have this huge book of cards that have pre-arrival instructions,” he said. “That way we can do baby delivery, we can do CPR, we can do choking, we can do stroke diagnostic, or if it’s just a sick person who’s throwing up we have stuff for that too.”

He also had a 24-hour course on the state system for running license plate numbers, looking up criminal histories and entering warrants.

It’s hard work–and Stensland tries not to take the stress home with him after clocking out — but it’s also very rewarding.

“I like going home knowing I helped somebody out,” he said. “You don’t think about the paycheck at the end of two weeks, you think about going in to work the next day. It’s not about the money for me, it’s about the public service.

“At Christmas day right at midnight, I had a guy call,” Stensland went on. “He didn’t call 911, he just called the sheriff’s office and thanked all of us, law enforcement, dispatchers and wished us a merry Christmas.

“You don’t get that very often. You don’t get thanked a whole lot, but when you do it feels good. It feels like you did something right.”