Help on the Line

“Are you in a safe place where you can talk?” asks the woman who has answered the phone.

“Um, yeah,” says the woman who has made the call. “I’m alone.”

“And if we get disconnected, would you like me to call you back or will you call me back?”

“I’ll call you right back, I guess.”

“OK, good. Now, how can I help you?”

The woman who has called slowly tells her story, of a man she knew and sort of found attractive, about how she ended up in his hotel room after an event they had been working on, about waking up to find him kissing her and pulling at her clothes, about pushing him away.

“And I don’t remember a lot of it. But I know I did say no.”

The incident occurred five years ago, she explains, but still it fills her mind, makes work difficult and relationships impossible, and she feels like she is going to go around a bend and never come back.

“It sounds like you’re repressing your emotions, which is very normal after a trauma like you are describing. Is there anything that happened today to trigger what you’re feeling now?”

“Oh, I had a terrible day, a really terrible day, and then I remembered that this is the day that it happened.”

“So it’s your anniversary,” says the woman on the hotline matter-of-factly.

“My anniversary,” says the caller, as if something has been revealed. “Yes.”

The conversation continues--the caller describing her feelings of alienation and fear, the hotline volunteer reassuring her that those feelings are valid and normal, then asking if she has ever had counseling, gently encouraging this when she says she has not. The volunteer gives her a name and number of a counselor at the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, then explains to her what will happen when and if she decides to see that counselor.

“You will have to tell your story again,” she says, “and I know it is hard to talk about, but you’ve taken a first step, and I am really glad you called.”

The volunteer asks if she can call her back in a couple of days to check in.

“Yes, please,” the woman says, and the two set up a specific time and day. “If you feel overwhelmed, you should call again. And I will talk to you next Tuesday at 6. All right? Goodbye.”

The hotline volunteer is Andrea Wallace, direct services and volunteer coordinator for the commission, and although the call as recounted above was not a real-time crisis intervention, it is based on an actual caller and her story. The exchange was, instead, a role-play done to help train new volunteers who want to work for the commission’s 24-hour hotline, much like the training Wallace herself went through five years ago.

People volunteer for many reasons--because they were raised that way, because they want to set a good example for their kids, because they want to make a difference, because they feel they should give back. Andrea Wallace volunteered because she wanted to understand.

Young Witness to an Abusive Marriage

A legal secretary for an insurance defense firm in Long Beach, Wallace had never given much thought to donating her time and energy to any particular agency or cause. Then a co-worker handed her a flier announcing training sessions for a women’s crisis hotline. She called, but the times were incompatible with her schedule. The woman on the line gave her the number for the commission. Within a week, she was putting in the first of 65 hours of training in crisis intervention, counseling, law enforcement and basic rape and domestic violence awareness.

Not that awareness was really an issue for Wallace. When she was 5 years old, her mother packed a few suitcases and herded her four children, the youngest still a baby, out the door. She moved from her home in Arizona to a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, got a job and started over. If she hadn’t left, she told her children, their father would have either killed her, or she would have killed him.

“My mother had been abused, and she left,” said Wallace, 36. “I wanted to understand why women stay in domestic violence situations. Then, as soon as I called, from the first time I was given any information at all, I knew that this is what I was supposed to do.”

“This” meant committing to answering the commission’s crisis hotline four hours a week for at least a year, with the understanding that she could also be called upon to meet women who had been raped or beaten at the hospital or police station. The hotline runs 24 hours a day so volunteers must be available around the clock, although the shifts are scheduled with people’s needs in mind and calls are forwarded to homes, offices or anywhere a volunteer feels comfortable.

Wallace, who lives in Los Angeles, had calls forwarded to her home phone.

“My first night, the phone didn’t ring for an hour,” Wallace said, looking out the window into a gray morning, remembering. “I kept checking it, to make sure there was a dial tone, to make sure it wasn’t off the hook. Then at about an hour and 10 minutes, the first call came.”

Since then, Wallace has answered thousands of calls--the hotline receives an average of 12,000 calls a month--has gone on hundreds of accompaniments, has done follow-up counseling, volunteer training and offered prevention awareness education in schools and throughout the community.

“In the beginning, my family thought I was crazy,” she said. “They were very concerned about the danger, that I was going to the hospitals to meet survivors. And for a few months, I worked with the Inglewood DART [Domestic Assault Response Team] program, riding with police to scenes of domestic violence. My family was concerned.”

For some people, a stint on a hotline, or at a shelter, can change the way they look at life. For Wallace, it changed the way she lived it. In the fall of 1996, she left her job in Long Beach to work full time at the commission’s San Gabriel office. There she helps recruit and train volunteers and manages the seven-woman staff. But she still takes her turn on the hotline, fills in when someone can’t make a shift, goes to the hospitals, to the police stations, counsels the survivors.

Sitting in the spare but cheerful counseling room of the commission’s west San Gabriel office, Wallace spoke quietly, in measured, soothing tones. The office is on the second floor of First Congregational Church in Pasadena and from the floor below the sound of choir practice rose, gilding the air. Hundreds of women have come to this room to speak of unspeakable things--rape, battering, violations of mind and spirit--and here, across from this woman whose direct gaze neither judges nor misses much, they have found sanctuary.

“I help the women explore their options,” Wallace said. “It’s important that they know they have options because they usually feel like they don’t. I try to provide follow-up counseling, but some of them just aren’t ready. Although sometimes a woman will come back weeks or months later, to work on something--a trust issue, for example--and that’s great.”

For reasons of safety, volunteers do not pick up or otherwise transport survivors. They can, and do, direct them to shelters, meet them at hospitals or police stations. They tell the women what their rights are, what the law is, what will happen if they go to the hospital or the doctor--the hospital is required to report the incident to the police, the doctor or clinic is not. If a woman has been hurt, they will encourage her to get medical help; if she is in immediate danger, they will offer to call 911. They do not use the word “should” or “must.”

“I don’t offer advice,” Wallace said, “because what a woman does is up to her.”

The survivors aren’t the only ones to unburden themselves to Wallace. Volunteering on a crisis hotline can be stressful and emotional work.

Supporting Her Staff as Well as the Callers

“It can be discouraging,” said Grace Kono, 53, who has volunteered for Wallace’s office for a little more than a year. “We want to resolve the women’s problems, but that’s not what we’re there for. We’re there to listen and give them options and suggestions. But a lot of times, especially when I don’t hear from them again, I feel helpless and sad.”

So she makes a call herself, usually to Wallace.

“She is very straightforward and encouraging,” Kono said. “She always calls me right back and always comes to the point. One time I had a woman threatening suicide, and I didn’t know what to do. Andrea reminded me that I was not responsible for the woman’s life, that I could make suggestions and referrals but that I shouldn’t take it too hard. She always makes me feel better after I’ve talked to her.”

“I have my volunteers call weekly and debrief me,” Wallace said. “Not only about the calls, but personally. About work and family. I want to take care of them so they don’t burn out. Sometimes I will say, ‘You sound like you have a lot on your plate. Maybe you should take a break.’ We try to act as a team. That’s why this works.”

“You know just as rape and assault affects the families and friends of the survivors, so does it affect our families and friends,” said Patricia Giggans, the commission’s executive director. “We joke around here that our friendship network is a bit limited because people don’t want to hear about what we do day after day. So if someone has been really putting in the hours, I will say, ‘You need to take at least two days off.’ ”

For Wallace, who is not married and has no children, the temptation to “check in” even on those days off is sometimes overpowering.

“When I go on vacation, which I do, I really go,” she said. “But in the evenings, on weekends, it’s hard to turn off the pager. It’s a real family here, and if I feel like someone is having a hard time, I will check in. I am learning how to pace myself better, though. Even if it’s just taking time out during the day to just be quiet.”

And to pray. Wallace’s greatest strength and comfort come from her strong relationship with God and the belief that she is now fulfilling her purpose in life.

“I’m Christ-centered,” she said. “I put all my cares and concerns in his hand. That is what helps me. Because I don’t know what to say to these women until God lets me know, and then I see the light in their eyes where before there was that terrible darkness. And I know I have done some good.”

* The Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women has three hotlines: (213) 626-3393, (310) 392-8381 and (626) 793-3385. For nonemergencies, call (213) 955-9090 or visit https://www.lacaaw.org.

* Mary McNamara can be reached by e-mail at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.