Heather Mulligan-Gonzalez

Board Member - President

Heather Mulligan-Gonzalez is a 25 year veteran of public safety. She spent 20 of those years with the San Mateo County Office of Public Safety Communications as a police, fire and paramedic dispatcher, training officer, and academy instructor. She has been tactical dispatcher and a member of the fire incident dispatch team.

Heather is the only California POST Subject Matter Expert on active shooters for dispatchers and participated in the POST active shooter video in 2015. She is currently consulting on the POST courtroom testimony video curriculum.

​Heather deployed in 2018 to support search and recovery efforts in Paradise after the Carr Fire. She is also a team leader for the San Mateo County Critical Incident Stress Management Team. 

Heather Mulligan-Gonzalez

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This picture was taken 10 years ago, 11 days after the San Bruno pipeline explosion. What you don’t see here is I was suffering from crippling post critical incident stress. My heart would race when I’d enter work. I wasn’t sleeping well. I’d replay things I’d heard that night over and over in my head. I was haunted by the images on TV and what I saw in person when I visited the scene. I was a mess.

Berto and I had only started dating about a month prior, but he intuitively knew something was off. He decided to take me out to do one of our favorite things, mini-golf, at Malibu Grand Prix, but only after I spent 7 hours in the kitchen with Mum making the perfect lasagna from scratch, my own recipe. It’s probably the best thing I have ever made, and it was the only time I’ve ever made it.

I never asked for help. Hell, I was a member of the critical incident stress management team. In the days and weeks that would follow, I never attended a debriefing. I never talked about what was bothering me: the hyper-vigilance, the insomnia, the emotional roller coaster I was on. I thought I knew how to take care of myself. It took Rey Pagarigan to sit me down and get me to talk to Janet Childs & John S. Warren. It took someone else to recognize I was not doing well to advocate for me, to look out for me and to give me nudge. It’s probably the greatest gift Rey ever gave me in the 22 years I knew him. We would go one to travel together and talk about San Bruno, and it’s why I incorporate and advocate for self care, not only after critical incidents, but before. It’s why I’m the advocate I am now for wellness and peer support. It’s also during this time that I forged some of my best friendships which have withstood the test of time and other tragedies.
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The point is, you never know what someone is going through. And you don’t have to in order to treat people with compassion. And I am so blessed to have people in my corner to look out for me. Don’t ever be afraid to ask for help and look out for one another. Together let’s erase the stigma and raise awareness.