Most cellular 9-1-1 calls in the Bay Area are routed to the overburdened California Highway Patrol's Golden Gate Division command center in Vallejo, then dispatched to local agencies.

On top of a long phone wait, dispatchers may not be able to help victims quickly because the location of cell phones, especially older models without global positioning devices, cannot always be tracked.

"They have a process to try to locate the phone's owner, in cases where the number comes up, which isn't always, but that takes time," said Mary Marshall, the division's communication manager. "But even this doesn't tell us where the person is."

If domestic violence victims need to report an emergency from their cell phones, the CHP urges them to call local police departments directly.

From just May through October, the division recorded 8,756 domestic violence-related cell phone calls to 9-1-1 from the nine Bay Area counties, an average of 57 per day. Authorities say there are about 1,900 victims of domestic violence in Solano County every year, 700 of them in Vallejo.

Women's shelters that hand out donated cell phones are giving their clients a false sense of security, Marshall said. "They tell these women, 'Here, this is for calling 9-1-1 in an emergency,' but usually they're the older phones, without GPS, and the listed owner is the shelter," Marshall said.

This makes it impossible to know where a 911 call is coming from without the person telling them, Marshall said.

In some cases, authorities can find what tower a cell phone signal is bouncing off of, and can sometimes narrow the search area that way, but in a moving car, for instance, this is of limited use, she added.

"A lot of people assume we know where they're at and that is often not the case," Marshall said. "Lots of the time, we can tell something's going on, but they've laid the phone down or hidden it.

"We get calls like that all the time. It's heart-wrenching sometimes. You know something's happening, and you know they're asking for help, and that they've laid the phone down and they think help's coming.

"We listen and hope they say something to give us a clue where they are, and sometimes they do."

Lileen Shannon, Vallejo case manager for the domestic violence support agency SafeQuest Solano, said the group no longer accepts donated cell phones. But, she said, many of its clients have their own cell phones, and may not be aware that 9-1-1 cell phone calls don't always bring quick rescues.

"We tell our clients they should program the local police department's phone number into their speed dial," Shannon said.

E-mail Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at rachelz@thnewsnet.com or call 553-6824.