NIGHT SHIFT While you were sleeping, LAKE HIGHLANDS, they were hard at work
Photos by Danny Fulgencio
When the night grows dark and the moon glows bright, most of us cuddle between the sheets. But for some, the day begins when everyone else is asleep. They say it never feels quite normal staying up all night, but their jobs in police stations and hospitals or bakeries and bars require them to keep vampire hours.
CBS DFW Morning Newscast
AM 3:08
It’s almost too quiet for a newsroom. Only the clacking of keyboards can be heard as anchors, producers and news writers prepare the lineup for the morning broadcast.
“Was she the passenger in the car? The woman who died?” asks one news writer who is reporting on a fatal traffic accident.
“Last we heard, she was the driver,” responds news producer Brenda Lawson, barely looking up from her screen. The mood is subdued, like almost any office toward the end of the workday. By this time, much of the team has already been at work for five hours chasing stories and writing copy for the 4:30 a.m. newscast.
A small news team works out of the CBS headquarters in our neighborhood on Northwest Highway; this particular broadcast is filmed in a studio in Fort Worth.
“As long as stupid people keep doing stupid things, we’ve always got work,” laughs field photographer James Pultz, keeping one ear on the police scanner. “You know the codes that make you stand up because they’ve found a dead body or something.”
It’s one of many tricks of the trade he’s learned from more than a decade spent pursuing news stories. He reads between the lines of chatter on the scanner like some people read tealeaves. “You can always tell when the cops shoot someone because it gets really intense, and then it’s quiet,” he says, adding that there is usually no mention of the shooting, just an officer saying, “confirm.”
“It took me years to figure that out,” he says.
AM 3:20
All those stories are filtered to Karen Borta, who at this moment is wrapped up in a parka with wooly Ugg boots looking more like a sorority sister than the lead anchor of a major network news market. When the cameras roll, she’ll shed her winter-wear in favor of a sharp white dress and sleek stiletto heels, which matched with her authoritative voice make this hometown girl one of the more popular anchors in the metroplex. But at this early hour, it’s all about comfort and staying awake, which explains the station’s extensive coffee offerings.
The morning shift doesn’t bother Borta — in fact, she prefers it. After 18 years on the nightly news, she was sick of missing family dinners and her teenagers’ sporting events. When CBS offered her the morning slot, she jumped on the opportunity, paying little mind to the 2 a.m. wake up call.
“For me, I have a husband and three teenage kids. I was never with them,” she says. “This is ideal for me.”
She is one of the few who seem to have no complaints about the schedule this news team is forced to keep. She gets home in the late morning after her broadcast, takes a nap, then enjoys the evening with her family and catches a couple more hours of sleep before heading to the studio from her Arlington home. Compared to the other producers and news writers huddled at their desks, Borta oozes peppiness, making it clear why she’s an on-air personality.
Photo: Meteorologist Scott Padgett and news anchor Karen Borta of the CBS Morning News broadcast.
AM 3:47
With a flurry of fresh verve, meteorologist Scott Padgett enters the studio, already dressed in a crisp suit and a deep red tie. His energy is almost startling at this early hour as he beelines for his weather forecasting station in the corner of the television studio, a series of monitors displaying real time conditions that he studies to determine the forecast.
One has to ask, in an era where every smartphone tells you the weather by the hour, are television weathermen becoming passé? Not at all, Padgett says.
“Those [weather] apps work off an algorithm,” he says, which explains why it sometimes predicts rain when you go to bed, but you wake to sunny skies. “My challenge is to interpret those algorithms so you can understand the variables.”
It’s a challenge he doesn’t take lightly. He has a pet peeve when it comes to “shock value” news that makes mountains out of meteorological molehills.
“I’m not here to scare anyone,” he says. “I just want to make sure you and your family are safe.”
His own interest in weather was born from fear. As a child growing up in Illinois, he was petrified of the robust storms that sweep across the Midwest. To help him overcome that anxiety, Padgett’s father painstakingly explained weather phenomena to him, from the classic counting the number of beats between lightning and thunder, to watching the same daily forecasts Padgett now conducts. He was hooked. That, paired with his natural stage charisma, made his career choice easy.
“You never get used to the hours,” he laughs. “At this point, my friends all know not to call me after 8 p.m.”
Photo: Scott Padgett conducts the weather forecast on the CBS morning broadcast.
AM 4:05
You hear Chelsey Davis before you see her. The clack of her heels reverberates brightly on the long hallways toward the studio. Her wide smile and clear charisma are a clear byproduct of her years as a cheerleader for the Arizona Cardinals.
If you want to know the status of Dallas’ notoriously gridlocked rush-hour traffic, you want Davis in your phone contacts. Traffic is her specialty and she is used to getting early morning check-ins from friends or family asking whether Highway 75 is backed up.
“Even viewers email me, and I always email back,” she laughs.
She’s dressed like Mrs. Claus this morning in cherry red with a big black belt. In addition to traffic, Davis also produces feature segments. Today’s has her presenting a shark-loving 7-year-old cancer patient a slew of surprises since he was stuck in the hospital for Christmas.
“It’s going to be the most amazing day,” she beams.
Photo: From left, Chelsey Davis, Karen Borta and Scott Padgett prepare for the morning broadcast.
AM 4:10
With its high-tech studio, you might imagine there’s a behind-the-scenes team of stylists who beautify the on-air talent before each broadcast, but Borta, Padgett and Davis share a sparse room lined with mirrors, where they handle their own hair and make-up. Borta and Davis twirl curling wands through their hair as Padgett swings by to check his already perfectly quaffed hair one last time. Then it’s time to head to the studio, where Borta positions herself behind the anchor desk to review the story list one final time, Padgett heads to his weather station and Davis scans the traffic patterns. Surrounded by a bevy of screens and teleprompters under a canopy of bright lights and wires, the anticipation builds as it gets closer to show time.
AM 4:29
Producer Brenda Lawson scurries around the studio, checking in with each person and making sure they are ready to go live in a matter of moments.
“Fifteen” she yells.
“Seconds?” Borta asks, dashing to her place behind the desk.
A voice counts down, the cameramen take aim and the script starts rolling as Borta’s authoritative voice booms over the studio, welcoming the morning viewers to the day’s news.
“It all comes down to the teleprompter operator,” aptly notes CBS spokeswoman Lori Conrad. He has the challenge of staying up to speed with Borta, not moving too fast or too slow as she reads the words that scroll across the lens of the camera, so she can speak directly to the camera.
Davis and Padgett don’t rely on teleprompters but instead improvise their broadcasts using the data they’ve compiled that morning. Padgett stands before a green screen, the monitor in front of him displaying a mirrored version of the weather map viewers see at home. Both he and Davis have mastered the precision of the “broadcast dance,” in which they effortlessly move toward and away from the camera. Watching it in person, it looks somewhat strange but on screen it gives them that friendly approachability that people expect from their morning news.
This cycle will repeat for the next two-and-a-half hours. News, weather, traffic, as the team greets each new segment of viewers waking for their day.
By 11:30 a.m., they’ll be home and in bed, right about the time the rest of us are starting to consider lunch.
—Emily Charrier
Photo: News around the world is constantly monitored for new stories.
Deep night shift, Dallas Police
AM 12:00
About 40 uniformed officers gather in a classroom at the Northeast Substation of the Dallas Police Department on Northwest Highway at Audelia. They are rookies. Most appear to be under 30. Our tour guides are officers Lacie Darnell, 26, one of two females in the room, and Scot Ansley, 30. A sergeant takes roll call and warns, “The call load is crazy.” There was a drug-related shooting at an East Dallas apartment complex. “We expect some sort of retaliation.” Dallas is a few days away from implementing new open carry gun laws, which will allow citizens to openly carry holstered handguns. “Watch the video,” the sergeant says, directing the officers to an informational video on the police website. They take up a collection to buy a Christmas present for Cecelia the custodian.
AM 12:15
Darnell and Ansley check their squad car for damages incurred during previous the shift. They stop at their respective personal vehicles to grab gear — gas mask, rain jacket, rain hat, for instance. “I hate the rain hat,” Ansley says. “It looks dumb.”
AM 12:23
They head north on Audelia toward their assigned patrol area, sector 105, beat 213, which includes what they call “5 Points,” also known as Vickery Meadow. The assigned section is like home base, but they travel all over the subdivision — which includes Lake Highlands, East Dallas and Preston Hollow — answering calls as needed.
AM 12: 24
There is a non-emergency disturbance near Casa View — yelling and a loud bang, so they pop a U-turn.
AM 12:26
Darnell says she had a pretty rough childhood. “I wanted to do something no one else in my family could or would do,” she says. She majored in criminal justice at University of North Texas.
AM 12:29
The caller, a middle-aged woman with dark hair pinned atop her head, answers the door. The noises came from the neighbors, she says, pointing. Next door, a man, woman and Doberman pinscher materialize from the shadows. The man says he’s carrying a gun and raises his arms so Ansley can pat him down. He shows his Concealed Handgun License. Darnell scratches the dog’s head. The officers separate the couple and hear their stories, which coalesce. Back in the car, Darnell says, “There’s nothing, really, that we can do. We had to make sure there was no family violence, because we would have had to make an arrest.” But both parties assured officers the fighting was over, that the loud noise was simply a truck door slamming.
AM 1:04
Darnell lives in North Dallas and has always been a night owl, she says. She can’t imagine patrolling days, with all the traffic. Ansley spent a year on days and wanted to come back to nights. “I like the sense of camaraderie. There are more people my age range. I just like it,” he says. They get off at 8 a.m., unless they are in the middle of something and have to work later. Darnell kind of enjoys shows like “Law and Order.” Ansley says he thinks all those cop shows are ridiculous. Darnell says she especially likes “SVU.” “I might have named my dog Benson,” she adds, smirking.
Photo: Officer Lacie Darnell responds to a late-night call.
AM 1:15
Darnell and Ansley respond to a non-urgent call that came in 90 minutes earlier. A woman who lives on Fair Oaks says someone is shining bright lights into her front window. They peruse the perimeters of the residence in question, a spacious two-story abode with big bay windows — it sits mid-street, at the top of a hill, facing a stop sign and three-way intersection. Because it’s late, Darnell calls the complaintant in lieu of knocking. But the caller wants the officers to come inside — she thinks she saw a shadow in the backyard. Wearing a bathrobe and slippers, she tells Ansley and Darnell she doesn’t sleep much. Spends most nights sitting on her upstairs deck, smoking. She says she has cancer. Darnell hears the woman’s concerns about the cars driving up and down the street that intersects her property, and their god-awful lights. Ansley suggests the blackout curtains he installed in his own home. They help him sleep during daylight hours, he offers. The woman snaps at him. “I do not want blackout curtains! I want people to stop shining their lights in here.” Ansley inches backward, letting his partner reclaim the conversation. “OK, ma’am, he is just trying to offer a suggestion,” Darnell says. “Because there isn’t anything we can do right now.” The woman relaxes. They remind her that her neighborhood association has its own paid patrolman who is parked right up the street. Leaving, we pass his cruiser. Parked at the stop sign, its headlights illuminate the caller’s living room.
AM 1:38
Red Bulls are purchased at QT on Skillman at Northwest Highway. “I’ll only use the bathrooms at QT or Race Track,” Darnell confides. Her other public bathroom options are gross.
AM 1:44
En route to the site of a reported theft at an apartment on Whitehurst, Darnell, who weighs maybe 115 pounds and looks like she could be a high school student, coolly recounts her recent encounter at a neighborhood apartment complex with a man’s mutilated body. “They cut his throat and pulled his tongue through the wound. He was so bloody, I didn’t know that was what it was until later,” she says. “It is a thing the drug cartels will do.”
AM 1:46
A tenant of the Las Brisas apartments says a man she hired on Craigslist to help her move stole some of her clothing, including a dress. Her one-bedroom apartment is stuffed floor-to-ceiling with boxes. The hired man helped her pack and wound up staying for a month, she says. She let him borrow her car yesterday, she says, which is when he removed the shopping bags containing a $200 dress. Darnell listens to the whole story, nods and asks questions. She explains that the theft is a civil case now, because the man was living with her. “He did not live with me,” the woman barks. “I barely knew him.” Darnell asks, “You say he slept on your couch since Thanksgiving, right?” That’s right, the woman admits. Darnell explains that this constitutes cohabitation in the eyes of the law. The woman rants that Texas is the worst place she has ever lived. Her laundry has been stolen three times from the apartment’s laundry room. The officers listen and nod and tell her to call them if the man comes back. “Do not let him back in,” they say. Before leaving, Darnell asks the woman about the other man, the one who was here last time she came. The woman says she doesn’t know what Darnell is talking about.
AM 2:21
Back in the squad car Darnell says she is positive she was there recently and that the caller had a similar story the last time. “We see a lot of repeat customers on nights,” Ansley adds. Sometimes her job is simply to lend an ear or to comfort someone who is anxious, Darnell says. Sometimes, if the caller seems especially troubled, these types of visits lead to contacting Adult Protective Services.
AM 2:25
As we pass The Haven apartments at Lake Highlands Town Center, Ansley says he found a naked guy sitting in his car there the other night.
AM 2:34
The security guards at Valencio apartments in Vickery Meadow need assistance — trouble with a belligerent drunk. The complex is silent and dark, aside from impressive holiday light displays on several porches. The guards explain that they found a man sleeping in the passenger side of a car. When they attempted to wake him, they say, he began swinging. “When you startle a drunk person, that tends to happen,” Darnell says. Ansley approaches the vehicle containing the unconscious man and attempts to stir him. The man is disoriented but calm, at first — but a language barrier breeds confusion and soon he is yelling things in Burmese, and people emerge from nearby apartments. When the man begins howling and hitting, Ansley cuffs him and escorts him to the backseat of the police car. That’s when his bawling wife comes running from a downstairs apartment. A youngster from upstairs translates. The couple fought earlier, we learn, which is why the husband was sleeping in the car. Through the teenaged interpreter, Darnell explains to the woman that her husband will not be locked up for long. She hands her a piece of paper with the number and address to the Dallas Marshall’s office, where he will spend the night in the drunk tank. A back-up cruiser drives away with him.
AM 3:13
Idling at Vickery Meadow park, Darnell types the report. She can’t do it while the car is moving — she gets carsick. If needed somewhere, they would switch places so she could drive and he could type, but things are quiet now.
AM 3:45
The young officers agree that the worst parts of the job include any crime involving children. Just last week they discovered a deceased infant. The caregiver reportedly had rolled on top of the baby, who suffocated. Ansley recalls the recent case of a 13-year-old impregnated by her own father. Darnell lies awake some nights thinking of a kid she picked up walking down a residential street in his pajamas. It was a nice neighborhood and he was just wandering alone. No one knew who he was. Finally they found his house through the homeowners association. Inside they discovered a filthy, chaotic mess of a living situation and the boy’s father naked and inebriated inside a closet. “He was the sweetest kid,” Darnell recalls. “He drew me a picture that I still have. Thing was, inside that house, there were photos that had been taken maybe a year earlier, and the dad looked OK. They looked happy and OK. What had gone so wrong?” It all brought her own dysfunctional childhood to mind, Darnell concedes. It’s also hard because, once her part is done, she leaves the case behind. She doesn’t know what happened to that little boy after leaving him with Child Protective Services. “We don’t get closure,” she says.
—Christina Hughes Babb
Medical City Emergency Room
AM 2:49
Kelly Wiggins is a couple hours into her shift at Medical City Emergency Room on Northwest Hwy., a department of Medical City Dallas Hospital. She’s wearing scrubs, which feel like pajamas, a blessing at this time of night. Thanks to a few cans of Diet Dr. Pepper, she’s upbeat and alert.
“I’m trying to cut back,” she swears. “I’ve been trying to drink more water.”
When she gets hungry, around 6 or 7 a.m., she’ll probably eat chicken nuggets or “supper” food. For her, it actually is suppertime.
Wiggins is accustomed to this schedule and this diet. She works overnight five times a week, sometimes here and sometimes at Medical City’s main campus on Forest Lane. Though her hours are strange, she loves being a nurse.
“I think it takes a very strong person to see people at their worst and comfort them and convince them you are trying to help,” she says. “It wasn’t a question of if I’d go to school for nursing but when.”
Wiggins, the youngest of four girls, grew up in North Carolina, near Fort Bragg. Both her parents are altruistic to a fault and clearly inspirational figures in her life.
“My mother was the first female EMT [Emergency Medical Technician] in our town many years ago,” she explains. “And my dad was a volunteer firefighter. He’d get calls during the night and if [my sisters and I] didn’t have school the next day we could go with him … I never lived a sheltered life and I always saw people helping people.”
Wiggins is a travelling nurse and has been for four years. Most of her contracts last about 13 weeks, meaning she’s lived in a lot of cities.
“I usually sign a three month lease and that’s expensive [to do],” she admits. “But you get so many opportunities to see places you wouldn’t ordinarily see and meet a different variety of people.”
AM 3:18
In a room down the hall, you’ll find Amin Bayat, a laboratory technician. He has the same positive attitude about his crazy schedule as Wiggins and also splits his time between this satellite building and the main campus. He tests specimen for “pretty much everything,” including kidney, heart and liver health. Notably, he isn’t wearing a lab coat.
“There are hard procedures we have to follow,” he explains. “The policy says you don’t have to wear a lab coat unless you are working with specimen.”
At the moment, Bayat isn’t working with specimen because it’s 3:18 a.m. and there are no patients.
Photo: Amin Bayat, laboratory technician.
AM 3:27
Two women take a break at the nursing station. They are Angie Cagle, a radiology technician, and Rachel Armstead, another nurse on duty. Their conversation revolves around medical TV dramas like “Code Black” and “Chicago Med” — funnily enough, “The Night Shift” doesn’t come up.
“I like to watch [the medical dramas] and criticize them,” Armstead says, laughing. “They’re all wrong!”
Cagle agrees that most of what you see on T.V. is inaccurate. Then she excuses herself to retrieve a Monster energy drink.
AM 3:33
Cagle returns with said energy drink.
“I have to hunt this flavor down,” she notes. “I can’t find it anywhere but QT.”
AM 3:50
The conversation turns, gradually but significantly, more somber. Like the rest of the staff on duty, both ladies also work at Medical City proper. Though the Preston Center location is relatively quiet this time of night, they say the main campus can get intense. They discuss what it feels like to see someone in excruciating pain. Cagle has cried out of empathy for patients, but she always holds it together while she’s at work, operating the computerized tomography (CT) scanner.
Armstead takes a deep breath and nods. She’s had similar experiences: “Sometimes you have to put your big girl panties on and do what you need to do to get the job done.”
—Elizabeth Barbee
Photo: Rachel Armstead, nurse.