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Ten years as a "stellar" employee

A chance encounter changed a young woman’s life.

Her personality wowed a Temple University security officer, and that has led to an impressive career
for Phylicia Rosario.
Her personality wowed a Temple University security officer, and that has led to an impressive career for Phylicia Rosario.Read moreRonnie Polaneczky / Staff

Here's my tip of the day: Mind your behavior in public. You never know who's watching, and it could change your life.

Take Phylicia Rosario. Ten years ago, she was a 19-year-old cashier at the 7-Eleven on Temple's main campus, where her charismatic personality and great customer service made an impression on the school's security officers who patronized the store.

One day, she met with a Temple officer named Charlie Scanzello, now 71, a former Philly cop who was trying to identify some kids who'd been caught on camera stealing stuff and harassing people. Rosario, who lived in the nearby Norris Homes apartments, recognized the boys immediately.

"She stepped right up and said, 'I know them. I live near them. We're tired of them and what they're doing to the neighborhood,' " recalls Scanzello. "She was gracious but very firm.

"I was taken aback. People don't usually offer up that information. They're too scared. But she really cared about her neighborhood. I've been in policing since 1965, and I can tell you we don't always get that kind of cooperation. But she was so mature for her age, and just so nice."

Scanzello told his boss that Temple could use an employee like Rosario. The boss asked Scanzello to have Rosario fill out a job application, and she got hired.

In the decade since, she has grown from a nervous newbie security officer to a dynamo in the department's sophisticated communications center, where she was the first person to attain the level of master-level dispatcher, a certification that required years of rigorous training.

She now teaches, coaches, and mentors others in the busy center, which handles thousands of calls a day from Temple's 38,297 students and 8,060 employees.

"She's just stellar," says Scanzello, now a crime data analyst for Campus Safety. Its 130 employees work in partnership with 275 officers employed by Allied Barton Security Services to guard Temple. "I've never gone out of my way to get someone on our staff, but she has proven to be exemplary."

The praise makes Rosario smile. She wears braces on her teeth, and they give her confident grin some extra dazzle.

"When I first started, I was so intimidated," Rosario says, laughing. "I had never thought about doing security work. I loved doing hair, and I thought maybe one day I'd open my own salon. But I really liked the energy on the campus, so I was interested."

Rosario is self-possessed and radiates calm as we sit together in the communications center during her 11 p.m.-to-7 a.m. shift. Three others (all female on this shift) are in the center with us, quietly taking calls, dispatching officers, and scanning images from the university's 700 security cameras.

Real-time information from the Philadelphia Police Department and Temple's computer-aided dispatch system scroll along screens before us. The women relay PPD information to Temple's officers, to keep them apprised of possible spillover onto three Temple campuses.(Officers from Temple and the PPD often assist each other on jobs.)

The communications center handles calls related to all three. So, on any given day, Rosario and her colleagues could be asked to help a locked-out student get into a dorm; a transplant physician receive delivery of a donated organ; a new professor find his way to an unfamiliar classroom; a passerby report a funny smell.

The amount of information coming at us makes me dizzy, but Rosario scans it expertly, its cryptic acronyms creating for her a mental view of the city that hums outside the center at 12th and Montgomery.

"It's quiet for now," she says, eyes flitting. Then she points to a monitor showing a line of students waiting to get into a campus bar. It will close at 2 a.m. "It could pick up then, so we know to keep a watch there."

Her first few years on the job, Rosario spent most of her time manning building entrances, and she developed warm relationships with students who'd swipe their ID cards, then linger to talk. They were close to her age, so they felt they could relate to her, but her almost maternal regard for them prompted them to share worries and triumphs.

"They'd be upset about a test grade and I'd say, 'You keep trying; you'll do better,' " says Rosario. "Or if they just finished a big project, I'd give them a hug. I was a support and a shoulder. I liked that about my job. Many of the students were far from home, so I was like family to them."

Still, she was intrigued in 2012 when she heard that Temple's radio operations were undergoing a major overhaul. Until then, Temple had a haphazard dispatch system, its radio room manned by security officers and police personnel who rotated in and out of duty. The constant turnover created issues and complaints that never got resolved.

So the radio room was upgraded with sophisticated technology, and the call was put out for full-time dispatchers. When Rosario checked out the gleaming new nerve center, she says, "I loved it. The people were smart and calm. The work was challenging and important. It felt right."

She got hired and hit the ground running.

"Phylicia was a standout dispatcher who wanted to know everything about telecommunications and constantly pursued proficiency," says Capt. Joe Garcia, who directs training, development, and communications for Campus Safety. "She also loves to dialogue and share information with colleagues. It didn't take long to identify her as a leader. She just has that 'thing' that pops at you when you meet her."

No wonder she was the first to be certified as a master-level dispatcher (a certification now shared by many of her coworkers, Garcia notes).

"I feel very proud," says Rosario, who works the overnight shift because it lets her spend the most time with her sons, ages 8 and 5. "No two days are the same, and I know the work we do is important."

Like the times she has counseled suicidal students who have called the center, gently coaxing them into telling her where they were so she could send help. Or calmed neighborhood residents whose frustration with partying students would otherwise have escalated.

"I've come a long way since the 7-Eleven," a job she also liked, says Rosario. But thanks to Charlie Scanzello, who saw something special in her 10 years ago, her heart is now all-Temple. "I found a calling," she says. "I'm really so grateful."

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