The 911 Academy Awards : Dispatchers: Those who kept their cool on the phone while helping to save lives in emergency situations are honored by their colleagues.

When Margaret Peters strides proudly to the podium to accept her “Outstanding Performance of 1994” plaque, the presentation won’t be broadcast live, nor will her award-winning work be made available to the public.

Then again, Peters wasn’t trying to entertain anyone during her extraordinary 4 1/2-hour effort. She was just saving lives.

Peters, 31, is a veteran 911 dispatcher for the Los Angeles Police Department. The tape of her performance in a hair-raising hostage situation in September has been unanimously judged the top police 911 dispatch of 1994 in Southern California.

In a nation where ceremonies honoring film, TV, music, comedy, beauty, sports and theater achievements are ubiquitous, the annual California Public-Safety Radio Assn. competition stands out as an eye-opening variant.

With little publicity--indeed, the entries are destroyed after judging because some cases remain in litigation--it is also one of the least known.

Yet at a time when 911 operators are increasingly under fire because of deadly botch-ups, the awards competition and banquet serve as a morale builder for the overwhelming majority who do their job well.

“This is real life; this isn’t ‘Rescue 911’ or ‘Adam-12,’ ” said the association’s outgoing president, Spence Leafdale, a supervisor in the Los Angeles Police Department’s communications division. “In our business, you do something wrong and you’ll hear about it. If you do something great, we may or may not hear about it.

“I got the idea for the contest because I kept hearing people at work saying they never get recognized for what they do,” Leafdale said. “I was watching the Academy Awards eight years ago and said, ‘Next year, we’ll do this.’ And we did. And we’ve done it every year since.”

The association hands out awards for outstanding performances in two categories: police dispatcher and fire/paramedic dispatcher. To choose this year’s winners, seven association board members listened to a blizzard of more than 50 entries--some brief, some lengthy, but all involving life-threatening situations--during an all-day “judge-a-thon” in a Spartan conference room at Inglewood police headquarters.

The panel looked first for technical excellence. “Do they recognize the gravity of the situation and follow policy and procedure to a T?” as Leafdale put it.

But the winning entries also exhibited an extra dimension--the intuitive skills with which a cool, calm professional takes charge of an emergency the way Michael Jordan takes control of a basketball game.

At an awards banquet April 13 at the Inn at the Park in Anaheim, this year’s fire/paramedic performance award will be presented to Los Angeles City Firefighter Matthew Johnson, who helped restart a drowning child’s breathing by gently but firmly talking the girl’s mother through the essentials of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Unfortunately, the girl, Kamber Malta of Granada Hills, died three days after falling into a swimming pool.

In a letter to Fire Department officials shortly after the tragedy, the victim’s mother praised Johnson for his sense of calm and called him “a shining light at a truly dark hour.”

Johnson, 35, is a onetime world-class water skier who joined the department’s communication’s office after having total hip replacement surgery two years ago. The determined dispatcher, who doctors feared would never walk again without assistance, recently worked himself back into good enough shape to finish among the top cyclists in the 12,100-entry bicycle portion of the Los Angeles Marathon.

Also receiving awards based on written recommendations will be two California Highway Patrol communications employees, John D. Isbister, of Orange County, honored as dispatcher of the year, and Duane A. Kendall, of the CHP’s San Bernardino office, honored as supervisor of the year.

In Peters’ case, judges cited her compassion and perseverance in handling a 3:30 a.m. call from a San Fernando Valley woman whose agitated boyfriend was holding a .38 to her head. (The dispatchers association does not reveal the identity of victims in cases that have not been publicized.) The man threatened to kill her but did allow her to dial 911 to inform police of the situation.

“It was obviously something dramatic and life-threatening,” Leafdale said. But Peters displayed enormous grace, he added, as she spoke with the woman while issuing an alert and waiting for a police hostage negotiator to arrive on the scene.

Later, as dawn broke, Peters’ personable nature proved essential in saving the life of the suspect himself--who had set the woman and four children free but was threatening suicide and had hung up on the negotiator.

Redialing the suspect, Peters remained on the line for more than two hours to help persuade him to surrender.

“I figured I’d spent so much time on this call, I just wasn’t going to give up on this man,” she explained. “He was very emotional. You could tell he really wanted to talk. He wanted someone to talk him out of it.”

Peters said she received assistance from fellow operators and experts who scribbled suggestions as she talked. At times, she was just winging it. “I told him to think about his kids,” the South Los Angeles mother of two said. “That they’ll blame themselves if you kill yourself.

“You just think of anything to say.”

Peters, a Loyola Marymount University graduate, has worked for more than six years as a civilian dispatcher for the Los Angeles Police Department. She took the job in the subbasement of City Hall after being laid off from her post as a Delta Airlines reservation clerk.

The transition from flight information to homicides and heart attacks was dizzying at first.

“When you hear gunfire,” Peters said, “you feel so helpless. You broadcast it as fast as you can, but there’s nothing else you can do.”

Not that every situation is life-or-death. With more than 100 calls per shift, many are from cranks or are not actual emergencies.

“Saturday nights, everyone has a party and some people think it’s Mayberry RFD and the police can stop every loud party,” she said. “They forget Los Angeles extends from the harbor to the foothills.”

“Or people call and say, ‘My son is outside and won’t come in.’ I ask, ‘What do you want the police to do?’ ”

Peters says she deals with stress by viewing herself as a single player on a large team. “This is my job and I do it--it’s always fourth-and-goal.”

The cog-in-a-machine approach extends to the results.

“You can’t be overly curious in this job,” she said. “You help people and you never really hear the outcome of what happens.”

In recent months, Peters, who had initially dreamed of becoming a teacher (“It didn’t pay enough to pay off my student loans”), has served as an instructor for the department’s large crop of trainees. In the past year, there has been nearly 70% turnover in the 500-employee LAPD communications division, and police officials admit it has led to some slowdowns in dispatches with officers in the field.

The new employees are needed, officials say, because of an LAPD program to free more sworn officers for patrol duties. Peters is one of many veteran 911 operators who recently began serving in above-ground LAPD offices--in her case, the Southeast Division--handling phone calls that were previously taken by police.

Peters says her performance award is gratifying because it spotlights the level of service that 911 operators provide.

“You hear all the hoopla over 911--and there’s no excuse for rudeness,” she said. “But it’s nice to know I can show it’s not always like that--that this is the way it usually is.

“My motto is, ‘Give the people the same respect I deserve.’ ”

As for the relative lack of public recognition, Peters shows no jealously or disdain for better-known performers, even those who play the role of killers as she toils anonymously attempting to save lives.

“I have respect for the job entertainers do,” she said. “People get enjoyment out of it. I loved ‘Forrest Gump.’ In fact, I was upset that ‘Interview With a Vampire’ didn’t get recognized.”