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In the past year alone, she’s accounted for 226 calls to 911 and been whisked by an ambulance to a hospital 117 times.
Among firefighters in the District, she’s a dreaded legend. They can recite her date of birth and Social Security number from memory.
Over 30 years, Rigsby has become the most frequent 911 user in D.C. history, totaling thousands of emergency calls and trips to the hospital after falling down, court papers say.
Dubbed “super users” or “frequent fliers,” repeat 911 callers have long been identified as burdens on the health system and a drain on public-safety resources. That’s why a group of city officials met earlier this year to figure out how to solve their problem with Rigsby.
Reading the entire story, it appears this woman clearly has a personality disorder or some flavour of mental interestingness (no physical cause for her frequent 911 calls has been established by doctors.)
I had no idea this was an issue. First responders MUST respond to every call as if it were a legit emergency, and that seems right to me. But there's surely boundaries; it is not fair that legitimate calls may go unanswered because of the emotionally unbalanced or needy?
But what of people who abuse 911 and first responders, for whatever reason? This woman and others like her may indeed believe they have a legitimate emergency even if they are calling 911 every other day....but it seems to me her needs are not being addressed.
I butt-dial 911 once and I'd be in handcuffs with cops screaming at me and telling me I'm going to jail. This lady makes bogus 911 calls on purpose and she's still walking around. Why not toss her butt in jail?
Hmmm, I'm 61 years old and I think that I have called 911 five times in my entire life, twice after serious car accidents and three times because of various potential fatal health emergencies where immediate medical was needed. And, even then I still have felt somewhat guilty using public resources for my personal or family needs.
I completely understand using 911 for true emergencies but I can not imagine how someone calling 911 hundreds of times, over years and years, can be tolerated. It is surprising that in all those times no one else has died or had a serious problem because the emergency vehicles and personnel were busy with the "frequent flyer".
In low income elderly housing there is a woman like that. She has a lot of medical problems but mostly there must be something wrong with her mentally. She will pull out her oxygen tube or something and then call 911. The big red fire truck comes in and the men get out and "rescue" her.
She'll even do it a few times a day. Her neighbor used to tell me all about it--she is absolutely miserable to him and has even kicked a hole in his apartment door!
She is just plain trouble. Apparently about 20 years ago she sued the apartment management for something--and she won too. A couple of times in the past few years the rescue people actually did take her to the hospital and from there she was sent to a nursing home. In the nursing home she would intentionally trip people with her cane!
The apartment management would clean up her apartment, hoping to rent it to someone else but she'd find a way to get out of the nursing home and sooner or later she'd be back living there. The nursing home people are always happy to see her go--she is so hard to handle that they don't want her either.
She doesn't belong in that apartment, calling 911 all the time and being terrible to her neighbors. Her neighbors took her to court a couple of years ago and she was told to stop destroying others' property but I don't know if they were able to do anything about the 911 calls.
It's fitting that the woman in the story resides in D.C. There seems to be a lot of people in that city that like wasting other people's $$$$$$.
Imagine finding you here, Ditch
I agree about DC, I also know every city that has a paramedic or higher level of responders, for medical 911 calls, have got their list of those who abuse the system. Unfortunately, where more Srs. reside more 911 calls are made.
We have two folks like this in our jurisdiction. We essentially created an incident type for these frequent flyers and rotate every company through the Battalion each shift. We also ended up committing staff resources to finding them help with Medicare, Medicade, and the local Elder Care group. In the end both are suffering mental health issues and require supervision for to ensure administration of their medications. The fact that the families didn't want anything to do with them didn't help. I know one wife of a firefighter who is an attorney worked out the legal issues on a Pro Bono basis.
This is fairly common problem in larger communities.
You call, They haul. They have to by law. People have been known to take advantage of this. She sure is an extreme case though.
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