Three Village Dads cancer event interrupted by Suffolk health department

On Sunday, April 16, Three Village Dads Foundation ran an event to raise money for a local chapter of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. The St. Baldrick’s website states it is “a volunteer and donor powered charity committed to supporting the most promising research to find cures for childhood cancers and give survivors long and healthy lives.”

Over the years, Three Village Dads have raised over $225,000 for local causes. They adopted the local St. Baldrick’s chapter last year and moved the event to the Veterans of Foreign War Post 3054 in East Setauket. 

David Tracy, chairman and CEO of 3VDF, is a VFW member.

“We had about 60 or 70 people come down last year,” Tracy said in a phone interview. “It was a bit rainy. So, it kind of muted the overall attendance. However, we still ended up raising $22,000 for St. Baldrick’s.”

This year 3VDF followed the same format but it was a much nicer day, with about 100 guests in attendance. There were vendors donating their time to feed the guests, and Setauket Fire Department brought a fire truck for children to climb on.

About 45 minutes into the event, two women showed up, one wearing a jacket with the words “Suffolk County Health Department.” “They both have clipboards, and they have very serious faces,” Tracy said. “They’re just saying, ‘You need to shut down, this is not a permitted event.’”

This surprised Tracy, as he explained to them that this was a private event on private property. They countered that the event was advertised to the public, so it was a public event. Tracy then offered to buy a permit, but he was informed that that is impossible on a Sunday.

“I asked [one of them] to maybe use discretion, to maybe call her boss and just let me talk to him — and just nothing,” Tracy said. “She wasn’t having it.”

Tracy believes that one of the two women works for the Tobacco Enforcement Unit of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services. “They were there to target the one vendor whose business model is a cigar and bourbon experience.”

“They tell me over and over, ‘These vendors have to stop,’” Tracy said. He explained that he was “willing to pay the fines, whatever the fines may be, but this is a fundraiser for childhood cancer research. We are not shutting down. We have two more hours left.”

One woman proceeded to go up to each vendor, go into their trailers, ask them questions and take pictures, according to Tracy. He said that this upset a lot of their guests.

“There were a lot of people that were paying attention to what was going on with her and her inspections, as opposed to paying attention to the 10 brave people to get up there and shave their heads in front of the public to raise money for charity,” Tracy said.

“I guess what bothers me the most is that if they knew about this a few days ago or a few weeks ago, why not just pick up the phone and give us a call,” Tracy said. “We would have rectified it.”

“It just reeks of bad government decisions, and we would like somebody to answer for that,” he added. “Whose call was this? Whose ultimate determination? Who has it out for my friend’s business?”

“I will gladly pay that fine if need be and we will gladly get permits next year. But the way this was handled is just all wrong,” Tracy said. “I would like [to make] a public apology to my organization, to the St. Baldrick’s organization, to the vendors, because there’s a much better way of handling this, especially if they knew about it ahead of time.”

The citation that Tracy received read as follows, “Organizer found operating a temporary food service event to the public without a valid permit.” It also said that 3VDF allowed “food vendors to serve food to the public without valid permits to operate.”

Suffolk County Department of Health Services did not respond to a request for comment prior to press time.