AUGUSTA — Mike Rankins has spent the better part of the last 40 years making sure help is on the way, often while comforting a panic-stricken caller on the other end.
Rankins on Monday worked his last shift as a full-time emergency dispatcher for the Augusta Police Department, drawing the curtain on a career he never meant to have but one he adapted to. His retirement fell just two months short of his 21st anniversary with Augusta police.
“It takes a special person to do that job,” said Augusta Police Chief Robert Gregoire. “To be able to do it for that period of time is amazing.”
Rankins will continue to work part time and help with training and may even pick up a job at a hardware store where he can flex his craftsman’s muscles, but mostly Rankins is just anxious to spend time with his family, especially his five grandchildren.
“My family has sacrificed a lot so I could do this,” Rankins said. “Nights, holidays, weekends, you miss a lot of events. I opened a lot of presents with my kids around me at the dispatch center.”
Rankins, 60, grew up in Randolph, where he first got the bug for emergency services. Rankins remembers listening to the police and firefighters on his home scanner as a boy. That’s where he learned to be a dispatcher, he joked. Later, Rankins served on the town’s volunteer fire department.
“I never wanted to be a dispatcher,” he said. “I wanted to be a fireman. I wasn’t confident enough to take the Emergency Medical Technician test. I just never went through with it.”
Rankins spent 10 years as a reserve police officer for the city of Gardiner, where he at one time worked alongside fellow reserve officer Gregoire, and about 18 months dispatching for the city. Rankins left there for a job dispatching with Kennebec County. He spent about 15 years with the county, interrupted by a year Rankins called a “life break,” during which time he also worked as a court officer.
Augusta police came calling, offering Rankins a dispatching job with better pay, but he spurned their offer because it would have meant shift work. They stepped up their effort to recruit him after Rankins quit working for the county and returned to the area after another year out West. He eventually took the department up on its offer, taking over dispatching duties in January 1995.
“We kind of needed each other, and it worked out perfect,” Rankins said.
Rankins has answered thousands of calls from people in untold situations. He tried in recent days to recall his most memorable, but he says they all tend to blend together. When pressed, he doesn’t mention the dramatic, like a structure fire, or the tragic, like a homicide.
He instead pivots to a call from a frantic child who was home alone and asking police to come fast because someone was banging on the door. Rankins was able to contact the child’s mother who confirmed the men banging at the door were expected. They were interested in a used car she had for sale.
“I’ve taken all kinds of calls,” Rankins said. “There’s nothing I haven’t taken.”
One of the incidents that most sticks out in Rankins’ mind came not as a dispatcher but while working as a police officer for Gardiner. He and his partner were at New Mills Market on Cobbossee Avenue one snowy night when a snowmobiler urgently asked the officers to help with a friend who had gone through the ice on Cobbossee Stream while riding his snowmobile. The officers found the man clinging to the ice. Rankins, secured by his partner, was able to convince the man to let go of the ice and grab a stick so Rankins could pull him to safety.
“If there’s a reel of my life, that’s one of the highlights,” Rankins said.
Gregoire said there could be numerous other lives that Rankins has saved during his dispatching career. Dispatchers not only direct emergency services to the right place, but they provide help to the callers until those responders arrive. That help could take the form of instructing people in CPR, or leading a person in danger to seek a safe place.
“How many lives he’s saved over the years I couldn’t begin to imagine,” Gregoire said.
Dispatching has undergone big changes in the years Rankins has been on the job. When he started, call logs were handwritten and information filed on index cards. Rankins’ equipment consisted of a blue pen for police, a red pen for firefighters and a pad of paper. Those items were long ago replaced with computers that control everything from the phone system to gathering location information.
“The position itself is very complicated,” Gregoire said. “It’s not like when Mike started where you have a phone and pad of paper. Mike has been able to adapt the entire time.”
Rankins said he was motivated to keep up because he knew there were people in emergency services and in the public who depended on him.
“I wanted people to think I did my job well,” he said. “These lives are in our hands.”
Rankins gives much of the credit for his career to the support he received from his colleagues and his family, which includes four daughters, two “bonus sons” and his wife, Valerie Rankins. He’s thankful Valerie took a job that allows Rankins to retire from full-time dispatching. After years of having to work during special events, Rankins is anxious to begin planning for birthdays and the holidays. He’s lost count of the times those plans have been dashed by an unexpected shift at work.
“That’s probably the part of the job I’ll miss the least, being ordered in or ordered after,” Rankins said.
Dispatching is a peculiar career, Rankins said. You work behind the scenes at all hours ready to handle any situation. Dispatchers contact just about every person who calls for help, and they often set the tone for how that call is handled, but if they do their jobs right, nobody will ever really know who they are.
Rankins said his greatest strength in filling the role well was not his calm demeanor or his ability to adapt, but his compassion.
“I hope I’ve given good service over the years,” he said. “I hope I did it well.”
Craig Crosby — 621-5642
Twitter: @CraigCrosby4
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