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By NOAH WORTHAM | Managing Editor

In April 2024, Calera patrol officer Mike Roberts was in his vehicle headed toward the location of a caller who had notified the department they were experiencing suicidal thoughts. Armed with his previous experiences as an officer and detailed information about the situation from dispatch, Roberts was ready for anything.

“I worked in Birmingham for 10 years, so we would get calls similar to this on a somewhat normal basis,” Roberts said. “Honestly, I was thinking it would be fairly normal.”

As he turned around the corner in his patrol vehicle, he spotted the caller outside their home as indicated by dispatch, but as he pulled in closer he noticed that the situation had turned much more critical as the individual was standing with a firearm pointed to their head.

As thoughts began to race in his mind, Roberts relied on his instincts and training and immediately stops the vehicle. He checks his surroundings and then puts the vehicle in reverse in case he needs to escape.

He opens the door to the vehicle but remains inside and begins to communicate with the caller. Even now, he can still vividly recall those critical words which were so delicately selected.

“I’m here to help you, and no part of me wants to bring you any harm,” he says. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

After a minute and a half of offering words of reassurance to the caller, the individual lowered the firearm and returned it to their own vehicle and proceeded to walk towards Roberts who led him to the patrol car to await the medics who would arrive shortly.

In a critical situation where every decision has heavy consequences and where either Roberts or the caller could have ended up injured or worse, the perfect solution was reached thanks to the training, experience and the combined efforts of police and dispatch.

“What could have easily been a suicide or a deadly force encounter ended up resulting in an individual in a mental health crisis receiving the care and treatment that was needed,” Calera Chief of Police David Hyche said.

Help is on the line

The response to each and every emergency situation begins with a phone call, and on the other line is a dispatcher who interacts with the caller and helps direct the efforts of emergency personnel. Being a dispatcher requires an individual who can think quickly, be empathetic and handle traumatic situations with serenity.

With a job that requires multitasking and burdensome responsibility, police have to ensure that the right person is selected for the job, and fortunately, for the Calera Police Department, Amber Hightower is more than qualified.

“I love my job,” Hightower said. “I know that, even if it’s a small way, I’m making some type of difference in the world.

Hightower worked with the city of Calera for 13 years and has a bachelor’s degree in speech language pathology and a master’s degree in marriage and family counseling.

In April 2024, Hightower was sitting at her desk when she received an emergency call that would test all of her skills and training in order for everyone involved to come out unscathed.

“All that I knew was that the caller was suicidal, that he did have a weapon but it was in his vehicle and he was inside the house and that he just wanted help,” Hightower said.

She immediately relied on her background in counseling and on her past experiences with suicidal clients. Hightower continues to talk with the individual and build rapport while simultaneously gathering details to help officers.

“I was thinking about, ‘Okay, how can I break through that barrier of him as the caller and me as the dispatcher and trying to find that common ground—something we can relate together on,’” Hightower said. “It was really difficult to do that.”

She continues to tell the caller that, ‘We care about you’ and begged them to “Please stay here with us.”

However, the caller says he doesn’t wish to talk anymore and Hightower proceeds to hear a door close as well as birds chirping and road noise—which alerted her the caller was now possibly outside, a detail she immediately shares with officer Roberts.

The caller then tells Hightower he has the gun to his head and Hightower tries her best to convince him to not go through with it.

“We want you here, we don’t want anything to happen to you,’” Hightower says. “We care about you, we want you to not do this. We want to be here with you.”

Eventually, thanks to her own efforts in tandem with those of Roberts, the man relents and is able to receive help. The high-tension situation reached the perfect, peaceful resolution thanks to Hightower’s quick thinking and prior experience.

“It’s definitely a balancing act,” Hightower said. “Trying to be there with a caller and sympathize with what they’re going through but also making sure that the officer is safe, especially if there’s a weapon involved… just trying to keep everybody calm while also keeping yourself calm and remembering to breathe in that high-stress situation.”

Partners in service

In order for a police department to make its mission of protecting and saving lives possible, it requires the collaboration of dispatch and officers to work together in order to achieve a peaceful solution with minimal harm for everyone involved.

“This is a great example of how important the two roles are together because the dispatcher engaged this man in conversation and really started the process of calming him down and getting him directed away from hurting himself,” Hyche said. “But also, the dispatcher relayed information that could have potentially saved the person in crisis’s life or the officer’s life.”

Likewise, officer Roberts made rapid judgment calls and decisions on maintaining distance and safety while also safely engaging in dialogue with the caller to build rapport.

“Police officers are tasked with making split-second decisions in potentially deadly situations involving individuals who may be violent criminals, high on drugs, intoxicated or in the middle of a mental health crisis,” Hyche said. “Doing your job as a dispatcher or police officer in a calm, professional manner, while knowing that your actions could have saved or cost a life is an enormous burden that individuals in this profession willfully undertake.”

Hyche said both Hightower and Roberts are the perfect example of the type of people he wants working at the Calera Police Department.

“We are very openly proactive and we don’t apologize for enforcing the law but we also want people that are caring,” Hyche said.

Even months after the incident, Roberts continued to demonstrate that level of empathy by making a phone call to check in on the caller who appeared to be in much better shape.

“He said he was doing a lot better,” Roberts said. “He said he was still having a little bit of trouble every now and then. There were some things that he was still working through but he did go to the hospital, the visit went well and (he indicated) that he was doing better.”

Despite the stark and serious nature of the call both Roberts and Hightower responded to, it is unfortunately one of many calls the two first responders deal with throughout the year. And although both of them and their fellow officers deal with emergency situations like this one each and every day, their efforts often go unnoticed by the general public.

“I don’t find out about the vast majority of the great things that my folks do,” Hyche said. “It’s funny that whenever they do something wrong, I have hundreds of people telling me but when they do something that’s very heroic or even very kind and caring, I almost never hear about it.”

Although many of these acts of heroism go unnoticed, it wasn’t for Hightower and Roberts who were both honored in September 2024 at the Shelby County Chamber’s 2024 Public Safety Awards for their efforts to save the caller struggling with suicide. Hightower later received a promotion to dispatch supervisor before leaving the department in April 2025 for a new position.

“Officer Roberts and dispatcher Hightower demonstrated courage, compassion, professionalism and humanity,” Hyche said. “They treated an individual in crisis with compassion and dignity while doing their best to protect the public and the person in crisis.”