Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. was appointed to the board of directors of Fighting Chance, a Sag Harbor-based nonprofit that provides free professional counseling services to cancer patients and caregivers on the East End.

He will be able to share unique insights as a two-time cancer survivor, having successfully battled Hodgkin’s lymphoma and pancreatic cancer.

“This is known as peer-to-peer counseling, and we see this as an area where Sheriff Toulon can make an exceptionally valuable contribution,” said Duncan Darrow, who founded Fighting Chance in 2002 and serves as its chairman.

Toulon, whose office is based out of the Suffolk County jail in Riverside, likened the position to how he established a Chaplaincy Program with local clergy who console families of fallen officers and those of victims of violence.

“A cancer diagnosis can sometimes hit as hard as an act of violence,” he said.

His wife Tina Toulon is the director of the New York Cancer Foundation, another Long Island nonprofit.

About Fighting Chance
Fighting Chance is America’s oldest and largest free cancer counseling center that operates on a regional basis. They have an office in Sag Harbor (34 Bay Street, Suite 201, 631-725-4646) and at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Phillips Family Cancer Center (County Road 39A, Suite 102, 631-638-7771).