A ‘lifeline’ for State Patrol

GRAND ISLAND, NE — In his first two weeks as a dispatcher for the Nebraska State Patrol, Craig Schoneberg was overwhelmed.

He doubted his abilities and confided in a co-worker that he was thinking about quitting. That co-worker told Schoneberg’s sergeant, who drove to Grand Island from Holdrege one night, got Schoneberg out of bed and told him he had faith in him.

“He told me it takes a year to make a good dispatcher and he thought I could do it,” Schoneberg said. “He trusted me. I had a lot of support.”

Over 38 years later, Schoneberg has quit. But it’s retirement, not a lack of confidence in his abilities that brought a close to his career.

He started as a relief dispatcher on June 4, 1973. Back then, he got two weeks of training and was sent to a duty station in Ainsworth to work alone. Now, dispatchers get four to six months of training. Over the years there have been a lot of single-dispatcher shifts but now there are usually two, sometimes three dispatchers working at once for Troop C, he said.

The eight- to 10-hour shifts are sometimes done straight through without any breaks. Meals are often eaten at the dispatcher’s work station, he said.

The calls vary daily. If the weather is bad, there are a lot of inquiries about road conditions or messages being relayed from the local 911 center to the troopers. When the troopers are working selective enforcements, record checks can dominate a dispatcher’s time. The 511 system helped cut down on the road conditions calls but bad weather still makes for busy days, he said.

“You never know what to expect,” Schoneberg said. “Every day it seems like it’s something different.”

Computer-aided dispatch has helped make the job easier, particularly when it comes to checking the multiple databases for driving history and criminal records, she said.

“When I started, there was a phone and a teletype,” he said.

The teletype put out a ticker tape with information on driving records. It could take two to five minutes to get a response. Now it takes one to two seconds to get records from multiple sources, such as databases from the FBI, the State of Nebraska and the court system, he said.

There have been many memorable calls over the years. Schoneberg laughed as he recalled getting a call from an out-of-state man who was driving on Interstate 80. He was alarmed to see a wild turkey strutting around near the road. He thought wildlife officials should be contacted. Schoneberg assured him that there were thousands of the birds around, and people hunted them.

He also got a call once from a woman who was playing a card game with friends. The women were arguing about the rules of the game and wanted Schoneberg to settle the dispute.

“I told her, ‘Ma’am, you’ve called the Nebraska State Patrol,’ and she said, ‘Yes, I know’,” he said.

But not all of the memorable calls have been funny.

One Saturday in 2005, Schoneberg was working with fellow dispatcher Janet VanLengen when the phone rang and a panicked woman shouted, “My daughter’s not breathing.”

Schoneberg knew the call had come from the phone outside the locked State Patrol building, and he could see the woman by a car in the front parking lot. He had VanLengen call the emergency center to get an ambulance as he paged the patrol captain and ran upstairs. A teenage girl with a newly diagnosed peanut allergy was in the front seat of the car, and she was turning blue. She needed a shot from an Epipen, which is used to treat life-threatening allergic reactions. Schoneberg had learned how to use the device just four days earlier and was able to give the girl a shot. She started breathing again before the ambulance arrived.

“It was really cool,” he said. “I came back in and it felt like I was walking on air.”

Patrol Capt. Chris Kolb nominated Schoneberg for the Nebraska Emergency Services Communications Association Telecommunicator of the Year Award.

“Craig is extremely professional,” Kolb said.

The two have worked together in Grand Island since 1994. Kolb commended Schoneberg for being on the “leading edge of technology” when it came to renovations.

“He’s more adaptable to change than a lot of people. He’s welcomed change and helped make decisions about what changes we should go with,” Kolb said. “He certainly has been an asset. He’s been valued for his expertise. It’s a complicated job.”

Schoneberg has been the communications supervisor since Jan. 1, 1985.

“That’s a lot of this white in my beard,” he said, stroking his chin with a smile.

April Staniec, a dispatcher who worked with Schoneberg for six years, had high praise for her former supervisor.

“Craig was always a very understanding boss,” she said.

He was willing to make scheduling changes and was a wealth of information.

“It’s sad for the patrol to have lost that,” she said.

VanLengen, who’s starting her 17th year with the patrol, was named Schoneberg’s successor in November.

“He was great to work with,” she said. “He went above and beyond for us and was a fair guy. I consider Craig a good friend. He was a great boss. It’s weird. I came to work today and Craig wasn’t here. And now it’s all on me.”

VanLengen was working with Schoneberg the day he saved the teenager’s life.

“That doesn’t happen every day,” she said. “We’re usually behind the scenes and that happened at our front door.”

Another memorable event reminded Schoneberg of the importance of being thorough. A trooper was called to check out a suspicious person at a hotel. He asked Schoneberg to run the license plate number and the records came back in a big burst. Schoneberg was busy and said he glanced at the records before giving some basics to the trooper. Two weeks later there was an armed robbery at a jewelry store and the suspect was caught in Harlan County. He was a survivalist who was armed as he hid in the leaves. He had to be taken into custody by the patrol’s SWAT team. Schoneberg later found out the robber was the same person whose license plate number he’d run. There was a warrant for his arrest and he was to be approached “with caution.”

“Our position is crucial,” he said of dispatchers. “The troopers depend on us. We’re a lifeline.”

Applying to be that lifeline happened by chance for Schoneberg, who was working at the Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant when a childhood friend joined the State Patrol. The job sounded interesting, but Schoneberg, who lost an eye at age 15, knew he couldn’t be in law enforcement. One night, he was flipping through the want ads, a section of the paper he never read, and there was an ad for a dispatcher. He was one of more than 30 people who applied. His childhood friend was stationed in Holdrege with the sergeant doing the hiring, and the connection may have given Schoneberg a boost, he said.

“They interviewed my wife, too,” he said. “They wanted her to understand the job.”

Over the years, Schoneberg has missed family gatherings and holidays. This year, for the first time in 15 years, he has Christmas off. It will be celebrated in Nevada with his wife, Darlene, his daughter and son-in-law, Jaime and Chris Jasmine, 2-year-old granddaughter, Adaven, and infant grandson, Egan.

Outside of work, Schoneberg is a bow hunter. He’s the Nebraska Bowhunters Association’s membership chair and was recently named to a position within the national organization as well.

In retirement he plans to go bow hunting, do leather crafting — he likes to make knife sheaths — and create things, such as candle holders, from antlers. He acknowledged that his wife of 41 years probably has a long list of things for him to do as well.

“My wife has been a fantastic partner,” he said. “She’s very understanding.”

Read the story here.

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