Sue Darling, right, an assistant women's basketball coach at the UA, shares a laugh with Wildcats forward Ify Ibekwe, left, and her sister Chinyere Ibekwe.

Mamta Popat / arizona daily star

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After chemotherapy and radiation rid her body of breast cancer, Sue Darling needed something more to bring her back to life.

She put down her coach's clipboard and pinned on a police badge.

Basketball had consumed Darling for decades — she played for Canyon del Oro High School and the University of Arizona Wildcats. But what she saw and did as a police officer helped her escape from the terrors of a life-threatening illness.

Darling found solace in shooting a gun, riding in a squad car and working the overnight shift as a patrol officer in Boulder, Colo.

When she received a call in her squad car in the middle of the night, she felt a rush of adrenaline.

The streets were empty, and Darling stepped on the gas pedal and headed for the action.

"They say being a cop is a ticket to the best show on Earth — and it really is," Darling, 47, said.

"You see the most bizarre things. You see the funniest things. You see the saddest things. You see the happiest things, the whole roller coaster. That cop stuff really saved my life, made me feel alive."

You could say that Officer Darling rescued Coach Darling, because today Coach Darling is back. Now an assistant for the Arizona women's basketball team, Darling returned last spring to her family in Tucson and to the sport and profession she truly loves.

"Being a cop satisfied my need to see if there's something else out there for me that I love more than basketball," she said. "You get out of bed and say, 'I can't wait to get to work.' I always do that as a basketball coach."

A few months after she turned 41, Darling was given her first mammogram. She was between coaching jobs and living in Denver.

On Feb. 6, 2002, test results revealed a lump in her left breast and a trace of cancer in the lymph nodes under her left arm. Her family had no history of breast cancer.

"I'm young. I'm vivacious. I'm whatever," Darling recalled. "I get that phone call.

"It's not me.

"You got the wrong person.

"There's no way in hell it can be me."

Darling underwent surgery to remove the lump in March 2002. Four rounds of chemotherapy and a month of radiation followed.

She had her first chemo treatment a couple of days before she interviewed for an assistant job at Northwestern University.

In case her hair fell out, she bought a short brownish-blond wig to wear to a meeting with coach June Olkowski.

"It wasn't the ideal situation, but I was thinking of Sue more than anything else," said Olkowski, who has known Darling since Olkowski coached at Arizona from 1985 to 1991. She hired Darling and compared her to a utility baseball player.

"You can put her in any position, and she has experience and knows what to do and what's expected," Olkowski said, citing Darling's loyalty, passion and knowledge as strengths. "And she has no ego at all."

When Darling met the team, her hair had fallen out. She wore bandannas in purple (Northwestern's school color) or navy blue. She ditched the itchy wig.

To endure the vomiting, ringing in her ears and fatigue caused by chemo, Darling remembered a lesson an associate athletic director at the Air Force Academy had told her when she coached there.

Jim Bowman advised students to take their six weeks of boot camp "one day at a time." If they couldn't, he'd tell them to take it "one meal at a time."

Darling endured the nausea and insomnia for a couple of days after each chemo treatment — but the sickness seemed to last longer after each round. After the final round, she moved to Chicago and told the movers to put her furniture wherever they wanted. She stayed in bed for four days.

Darling's older sister, Linda Caverly, visited Sue in Denver after a round of chemo. A couple of days after treatment, she was up and packing her bags for a flight to Chicago.

"I personally wouldn't have had enough energy to get on a plane," Caverly said. "She seemed to have boundless energy."

By Halloween 2002, Darling's dark brown hair had grown back an inch, and she was on her way to becoming cancer-free. She continues to take Aromasin, a pill that decreases the chance of cancer recurrence.

"Supposedly when you get five years away from the cancer, you're good," Darling said. "I just want to get as far away from it as I can. Every year is a good year."

Darling grew up as the second-oldest of Ralph and Mary Ann Darling's five children in Potomac, Md. The family moved to Tucson in 1977 when Darling's grandfather, Ralph, brought the administrative offices of his rubber company, R.E. Darling, to Tucson.

At age 8, Sue learned to play basketball against other kids at a neighborhood hoop in Potomac. She joined the Canyon del Oro basketball team as a senior and played various positions.

"We didn't have much of a team, but when Sue came, that changed things for us," said Lori Lefferts, Darling's friend for 30 years and a former teammate. "We basically had one play in school — bring the ball down and get it to Sue."

Darling went on to play at Arizona as a guard/forward from 1978 through 1982, and she served as captain in '82.

She graduated in 1983 with a degree in education and began a career in coaching — describing a basketball court as her "canvas for creativity."

In March 2004, Northwestern fired Olkowski, leaving Darling and the rest of the staff unemployed. Darling returned to Denver, where she still had friends and a house. She coached at Mullen High School for a season. She also began to re-evaluate her life. People warned Darling that if she left coaching, it might be difficult to return.

"I knew I would coach again," she said, "but I just wanted to get away from it, because that's all I had been doing."

A fan of detective stories and "Law & Order: SVU," Darling contemplated attending law school or joining the FBI. But at 45, she was older than the FBI's age limit of 37. A friend who was a policewoman on the Denver force recommended law enforcement.

Darling was accepted by the Boulder, Colo., Police Department and attended the police academy starting in August 2005. As the oldest of her seven-member class, she learned how to drive a squad car, slam on the brakes and whip the vehicle around. She jumped fences. She wrestled male co-workers during training. She ran through obstacle courses.

"Cops get that reputation for being standoffish or jerks," training officer Jeremy Frenzen said. "She is totally different from that stereotype. She always has an awesome personality. The fact she's succeeded doesn't surprise anybody, because she's always so upbeat."

During her three years as a cop, Darling saw her first dead body — a man had hanged himself in a garage. She consoled a family whose 2-year-old son died of an illness. She used a Taser on a man on drugs who was punching holes in walls.

"There were a lot of connections between being a cop and being a basketball coach or a team member on a basketball team," she said. "It takes smarts, emotional savvy, physical ability. What it did for me was it gave me that break, and it made me feel alive again."

During her first year as a cop, Darling didn't think much about basketball. She vowed to be a cop for five years, but by her second year on the job, she missed basketball and watched high school and college games again.

When Arizona had the assistant-coach opening, Darling called Niya Butts, whom she had never met.

"She's had some experiences as a head coach I haven't been able to have," said Butts, whom Arizona hired on April 3 to replace the fired Joan Bonvicini.

"She's bringing knowledge of Tucson and the UA. An unbelievable source I have in the office, and I couldn't have made a better hire."

Darling recently flew to Dallas to recruit. After all the days of chemo, years of chasing criminals and moving around the country for work, she felt like she was in heaven watching a basketball game.

"I enjoyed (being a police officer), but I know I love basketball," she said. "I want to say my passion is basketball, but it's not. My passion is life."