Friday is my day to volunteer with the local sheriff's department. I work in the vehicle abatement program. This means I drive a volunteer car and wear a uniform of sorts and get to listen to the command channel on the Motorola radio. To compare it to being in the captain's seat of a fire engine is like comparing looking at the Victoria's Secret catalog to sex. A very poor substitute.

Some local fire departments have volunteers but you must live in the district. Where I live there is a paid call system they use to generate a hire list. In any case, my days of wearing MSAs and pulling hose are long gone.

Today the usual dispatches came over the air. Domestics, 911 hang-ups, drunks and such. One call, a suicide attempt got me thinking. I have been to every conceivable form of suicide possible: shooting, cuttings, hangings, pills, jumpers, and once a guy drown himself in a bucket of water. Hard to believe but it happened.

The one today was a wrist slash. She did it and called 911. I have great sympathy for someone who is depressed. A very good friend of mine shot himself a year ago. The dispatcher said this was a repeat call. She had done this before. I have been on lots of attempts where the person was looking for attention, maybe help. This one today resulted in code 3 response of a fire rig, an ambulance, and two P.D. units. That is a lot of red lights being broken and citizens being put in harm's way not counting the emergency personnel. I hope this lady gets what she is looking for and stops this behavior before someone does get really hurt.