A quick dispatcher

Deepa Bharath

It’s hard to believe that Jason Servin did it all from a well-lighted

room that, to a lay observer, looks like nothing more than an average

call center.

It’s from this obscure part of the Newport Beach Police Department

that mild-mannered dispatcher Jason Servin saved a man’s life.

With his headphones on, the 31-year-old Servin, who is part of the

department’s hostage negotiation team, convinced a suicidal man to

drop the knife he was holding against his neck -- teetering on the

brink of life.

For 45 minutes, Servin was marketing life to a man who had lived

it and loathed it.

In the end, Servin had made the sale. The man chose life rather

than a brutal end.

The Newport Beach Police Department honored Servin last year with

the prestigious Lifesaving Award for the courage and persistence he

showed during the 2002 incident.

On Wednesday, Servin was hailed once again for his heroic act by

the American Legion Harbor Post 291. He was presented with a plaque

and also accepted a $1,500 check on behalf of the department. That

money has already been allocated for a defibrillator, a device used

for resuscitation.

Servin, who started off in the Police Explorer program in Garden

Grove, wanted to be a police officer, like most others in that junior

program. But his career led him on a different path, and as it turned

out, he liked it.

“This job gives me a chance to help people and make a difference,”

he said. “It gives me an opportunity to help people in their most

desperate time of need.”

Servin became interested in hostage negotiation after he took a

call from a suicidal woman with a gun in 1999.

“At that time, I had no training at all,” he said. “But after one

hour, I was able to convince her to peacefully surrender.”

That incident told him he had a way with people and a way with

words.

“That phone call acted as a catalyst,” Servin said.

He applied to become part of the department’s hostage negotiation

team, but didn’t get in right away. He took a weeklong course and

learned about basic negotiation techniques.

“That course and the training I took with the department help me

become better at this,” Servin said.

He made the team in December 2000 and has been one of its valuable

members ever since.

Helping was always part of who Servin was, said Joe Horton, his

friend since seventh grade, who also works as a Newport Beach police

dispatcher. They’ve known each other for 20 years.

“Jason has always been a caring person,” Horton said. “I still

remember this one time when a sliding glass window in our home broke

and things were tough for my mom. Money was hard to come by.”

So Servin anonymously dropped off an envelope with money to fix

the window, although he had nothing to do with the damage.

“It was money he earned on his newspaper route,” Horton said.

“That’s how much he cared.”

Servin’s temperament is perfect for a hostage negotiator, he said.

“He’s very empathetic while talking to people on the phone under

high-stress situations,” Horton said. “And at the same time, he looks

at the big picture like the safety of the person who is calling,

where the officers are and their safety. He is good at

multi-tasking.”

What Servin does is invaluable to the department and to the

community, said Earl Fusselman, a senior volunteer with the police

department and an American Legion board member.

“I think what he has done is heroic,” he said. “When someone can

do something like that for another person, it’s great.”