Metro

Figoski helped Brooklyn teen turn life around

Chaunce's mother Lorna Blake lights a candle and ofers a prayer at a makeshift memorial to Peter Figoski near the site of his shooting.

Chaunce’s mother Lorna Blake lights a candle and ofers a prayer at a makeshift memorial to Peter Figoski near the site of his shooting. (Paul Martinka)

Slain cop Peter Figoski had four daughters of his own and could not stand to see a young woman about their age take the wrong path.

That woman, now 21, credits him with turning her life around.

Velina Chaunce met Figoski when her mother, in desperation, called the 75th Precinct in gritty East New York to report her then-teenage daughter was acting out.

Lorna Blake told the cops her wayward daughter was drinking, breaking curfew and hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Figoski went to their house and “spoke to my daughter like she was one of his own,” said Blake.

“He really set her straight. He told her, ‘If I have to come back here, I will bring you in.’ That got to her.”

The conversations didn’t start well. Chaunce initially cursed and refused to listen.

But his persistence paid off.

“I used to stay up late and act up. He told me he has girls and he would not let them disrespect their mom like that,” said Chaunce, who went to the station house to sign a condolence book.

The tone of their talks, Blake remembered yesterday, was “like a father-daughter conversation.”

The grief-stricken mom and her now-reformed 21-year-old daughter are both mourning the soft-spoken but stern NYPD officer whose caring nature changed their family.

“It’s a real loss,” the mom said. “I’m heartbroken.”

“I feel bad for his family. They took away a father,” said Chaunce.