GREENFIELD - In 18 years as a Greenfield Police dispatcher, Cindy Peschong never had a call like this.
 
"I'm being held hostage," the faint voice on the other end of the line said.
 
"Obviously your heart drops," Cindy said a day after the ordeal as she sat at her console in the Greenfield 911 center. "It was like, 'Oh my God, is this really happening?'"
 
An armed man had taken a teenaged clerk hostage inside the Speedway gas station at 60th and Cold Spring. 

But Wednesday night Cindy exhibited that intangible quality Ernest Hemingway described as "grace under pressure." 

She spoke in measured tones to the hostage and the gunman. Gradually, over a twenty minute period, she was able to diffuse a tense standoff.
 
"You just try to stay calm so they stay calm," Cindy said in the same soothing voice that had only hours before eased a gunman off the proverbial ledge.

"You know you want to gain their trust, let them know that you know they can trust me. I'm going to try and help them anyway I can."
 
As Cindy talked to the gunman, he decided to free his hostage. But Cindy is crediting the hostage with being equally unflappable.
 
"I think it really helped that the victim was so calm and brave," she said.
 
The mother of two doesn't end her spreading of praise there. 
 
"It is a team effort," she said including her colleagues on the Greenfield force. "I think it was so nice that a bad situation turned out as good as it did."