At the desk of Gallatin County 911 dispatcher Natalie Russell, the glow from stacked monitors illuminates her face. A small black headset rests on her head and covers her ears.

“911, what is the address of your emergency?” she says to a caller.

As Russell listens, her fingers fly across the keyboard with a practiced ease. Her eyes remain locked on the screens.

“Typing was a big thing in high school for me,” she’d later say in an interview with the Chronicle. “When I was in school, computers became more and more in education, and I did a lot of typing outside of school and in school.”

Between questions and answers, Russell trained an incoming dispatcher. Throughout the room — roughly the size of a school classroom — three other dispatchers took calls from emergency and non-emergency lin

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