Suspend background thread

Yeah, sorry. I've got that background thread that retrieves some personnel data including their GPS coordinates as they are posted to our servers and then maps it to Mappoint 2004. The back-end is sql 2000 Pretty much making a map interface that displays our service guys. So I thought the best way to do this was to use a thread so the user doesn't have to keep on pressing a refresh button.

So the app is running and the thread is refreshing the pushpins on the map, and moving them as the GPS coordinates change. The user wants to find a property or personnel so they click that button. Right at that moment I'm guesing I should suspend my background thread so the UI is more responsive and I'm also retireving more data from the DB which would be benificial too.

So what is the correct way I should suspend my thread.