Dispatchers Give Aid to Stricken Colleague : Simi Valley: Drive raises $25,045 for Lynn Frobisher, who has terminal cancer. Donations are brainchild of fellow workers.

Lynn Frobisher has spent much of her working life--as a policewoman and now as a Simi Valley police dispatcher--helping total strangers in life-or-death crises.

Now she is terminally ill with cancer. And scores of people, including many city workers who are strangers to her, have pooled $31,719.52 to help her in the final months of her life.

Frobisher, 47, is to receive a $25,045.01 check today. The balance from a donation drive among city workers went to taxes.

“There are no words to describe how it feels,” said the Simi Valley woman, a divorced mother of two teen-agers who has spent about 13 years with the Simi Valley Police Department. “I’ve always been the type who’s tried to help others. It’s been hard for me to accept help.

“I don’t know what to say, other than ‘Thank you.’ But those are small, small words.”

The donation drive, the brainchild of Frobisher’s fellow dispatchers, began Sept. 13. That was the same day that Frobisher’s doctor told her she might have just one to three months to live because of liver cancer, she said.

Since then, 180 employees of the Police Department and other city agencies have pledged to give up 1,537 hours of vacation or sick time to help Frobisher defray her living expenses, Assistant City Manager Mike Sedell said.

Most of the donations came in the first three days of the drive and nearly all of them involved at least a day of sacrificed vacation time, communications supervisor Lynn Freeman said. One person gave a week.

“It was symbolic to give time, because she doesn’t have much time,” Freeman said. “There was no hesititation. People were charitable, more than we’d expected. . . . . It was just heart-warming to see so many people pull together and help.”

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Frobisher, described by colleagues as a diligent worker, said she has tried to continue working without complaint since doctors diagnosed the liver and colon cancer in late February, 1993.

In March, 1993, her colon was removed. Radiation and chemotherapy treatments followed, but doctors told her in July that she had a third cancer, a rectal tumor, she said.

When Dr. Hany R. Kahili told her last week that her liver cancer might give her as little as a month to live, she was stunned.

“It still doesn’t seem true,” she said.

But her line of work--so often involving the trials and tragedies of others--has given her a perspective that others might lack, she said.

Only a couple of months before, she recalled Thursday, she and fellow dispatcher Kathy Gott handled a call involving a baby who apparently fell victim to sudden infant death syndrome. When a police officer later told them the baby had died, they both cried, Frobisher said.

“It was just unfortunate that it was the baby’s time to go,” she said. “But it was his turn.”

With her own death now nearing, she added, “I wonder why, why me? Why couldn’t it be someone else? But, well, it’s my time. There’s got to be a reason. I just don’t know what it is.”

Frobisher, who was divorced from her third husband in January, said she plans to use the donated money for rent, utilities, groceries and other expenses not covered by her state disability income benefits.

She said she also plans to use some of the money for tuition for her daughter, 19-year-old Jennifer Walker, who attends the Bryan College of Court Reporting in Los Angeles. Her son, Richard Walker, 17, attends Simi Valley High School.