Jonesboro, AR – (JonesboroRightNow.com) – Aug. 6, 2025 – A Jonesboro E-911 dispatcher who gave lifesaving CPR instruction was honored with a proclamation during Tuesday’s city council meeting.
Gracie Doty, who started working as a dispatcher in May, went through the city’s new Emergency Medical Dispatch program, allowing dispatchers to provide certain lifesaving instructions, including CPR, over the phone.
On July 19 at 7:48 p.m., about a month and a half after she completed the training, she received a phone call in which the caller reported a woman had suddenly stopped breathing. During the proclamation, Mayor Harold Copenhaver said Doty’s manager was next to her as she walked the caller through CPR, but allowed her to “do the thing.”
“Gracie Doty remained calm and collected, [and] asked another dispatcher to send the fire department,” Copenhaver said. “She instructed an untrained person present in the home how to administer CPR over the speakerphone. Gracie started a metronome and counted, reassuring and encouraging the tenant with every compression. Less than a minute after starting CPR, the woman began breathing.”
Copenhaver added that when the fire department arrived on scene, the woman was sitting up and breathing, even turning down transport to the hospital.
READ MORE: Jonesboro dispatchers giving life-saving instructions by phone through new program
The program, which became active at the city’s E911 Communications Center in late June, teaches dispatchers how to provide instructions to potentially save a patient’s life, including CPR, bleeding control, and more over the phone.
According to information from the city, the center’s 26 dispatchers completed 40 hours of specialized training and passed written and practical exams for the program.
Copenhaver thanked Doty for her action.
“I, Harold Copenhaver, mayor of the city of Jonesboro, by the virtue invested in me by the law of the state of Arkansas, do hereby recognize Gracie Doty as a hero for saving the life of a Jonesboro resident,” he said. “Thank you, Gracie.”