Brevard Dispatcher Honored for Calm Leadership During Major Emergencies
Communications Training Officer Madison Herold was named BCSO's 2025 Public Safety Telecommunicator of the Year after coordinating an extraordinary series of emergencies while training a new dispatcher.
Madison Herold works at the point where a frantic phone call becomes a coordinated emergency response.
The Brevard County Sheriff's Office named Herold its 2025 Public Safety Telecommunicator of the Year, recognizing both one extraordinary shift and the steady leadership she has shown since joining the agency in 2022.
Herold is a Communications Training Officer, which means she was not only handling emergencies during the shift highlighted by BCSO. She was also teaching a new telecommunicator how to make decisions while those emergencies unfolded.
Three trauma alerts, four helicopters and a trainee beside her
During the shift cited in her award, Herold managed three trauma alerts and coordinated two different air-medical services. She arranged four helicopters and helped multiple outside agencies respond to incidents that extended beyond normal operating areas.
One of the calls involved a rollover crash with seven victims, including a juvenile who had been ejected and was initially missing.
The Sheriff's Office said Herold continued explaining her decisions to the trainee beside her while managing the response. That detail turns the shift from a story about composure into one about leadership: she kept the emergency moving and the lesson going at the same time.
What a public-safety telecommunicator does
The Sheriff's Office's Unified Communications Center operates from Brevard's Emergency Operations Center in Rockledge. Its dispatchers and 911 call takers coordinate law enforcement, fire-rescue and medical responses throughout the county.
Their work includes gathering details from callers, sending the appropriate responders, tracking units and sharing real-time information from local, state and federal databases. On a complicated scene, they may be communicating with several agencies and medical resources at once.
BCSO's Unified Communications Center coordinates law-enforcement, fire and medical responses across Brevard County. Photo courtesy of the Brevard County Sheriff's Office.
Most residents will never see the person doing that work. They hear a voice, answer questions and wait for help to arrive. The dispatcher remains at a console, moving to the next call after the first emergency is underway.
Leadership beyond one difficult shift
BCSO's award announcement describes Herold as a mentor who creates customized training tools for team members and serves as an acting shift supervisor when needed.
The agency also credited her with noticing an alert for a stolen vehicle while working a law-enforcement console. Her coordination helped officers locate the vehicle in West Melbourne and safely arrest a suspect, earning recognition from the city's deputy police chief.
Those examples matter because emergency communications is not built around a single dramatic day. It depends on attention and sound judgment repeated across thousands of calls—many of which never become public stories.
A rare moment of visibility for the voice on the line
Public-safety telecommunicators usually do their work outside the public's view. They do not arrive with flashing lights, and most callers never learn their names.
Herold's award pulls that work into focus for a moment. The helicopters, trauma alerts and rollover response were visible outcomes. Behind them was someone sorting information, assigning resources, keeping agencies connected and teaching a new colleague how to do the same.
Residents interested in the profession can learn more through BCSO's Unified Communications Center page and its careers section.
Sources and useful links
Kimberly Smith
Kimberly reports on nonprofits, volunteers, public health, and the neighbors turning good intentions into measurable local change. She looks for clear ways readers can understand a need, meet the people responding to it, and take part themselves.
