Life on the Line : Sylmar: A dispatcher keeps a teen-ager, who threatened to commit suicide, on the phone until police arrive.

An anonymous voice most days, police dispatcher Patricia Moebus became nothing less than a heroine Monday after persuading a teen-age caller not to kill himself.

Los Angeles Police Capt. Tim McBride, whose patrol officers were sent to the Sylmar youth’s home Sunday, said he was writing a commendation for the 36-year-old Moebus, crediting the five-year dispatcher with saving the boy’s life.

The youth, whose name was withheld because of his age, was being held Monday at Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar for psychiatric observation, McBride said.

Police may save lives regularly, McBride said, “but it’s much more difficult to do it over the telephone. You don’t have that eye contact, that ability to relate. So you have to quickly build a relationship and get them to do what you want.”

Moebus said she succeeded simply by keeping the youth talking, for about 15 minutes, until officers arrived at the house he shares with his grandmother.

He had dialed 911 about 3:45 p.m., said he had a .38-caliber handgun and wanted to kill himself, Moebus recalled. As she verified his address, she nudged the dispatcher sitting next to her and had her co-worker send police officers as she began asking questions.

“I asked him what had been going on in his life and why he had been depressed, and he said it had begun when his mother died,” Moebus said. “So I asked how old he was, and he said 16, but that his mother passed away when he was 11.”

Moebus discovered that the teen-ager’s father had moved away, and that the boy had spent time with a foster family, had run away and had lived on the streets in Hollywood. When he dialed 911, he said he was afraid that his grandmother would come home to find him with the gun, Moebus said.

She asked him about friends and whether he had had any professional counseling. She asked him what he did enjoy in life, to make him think about good things instead of all bad.

“He said he liked football and I asked him why he wasn’t watching the Super Bowl,” Moebus said.

“I really kind of felt for the guy. He was 16, can you imagine?”

As police arrived, Moebus was afraid that the youth might panic. She told him that he had to put the gun down because “it wouldn’t be good to have a weapon” when he walked outside to meet the officers. She told him to keep his hands in sight so that the officers would know he was unarmed.

She had been so engrossed in keeping the conversation going, she said, that she didn’t notice how much she was sweating until the end of her talk.

And her emotions surfaced only once, briefly, when she heard the youth put down the phone and the handgun and walk outside to meet police.

“My eyes welled up and I thought, ‘Well, he’s cool, he’s going outside.’ . . . Then I heard he was in custody and I knew he was OK.”