GARFIELD COUNTY, Okla. (KFOR) – Being the Sheriff in a county of more than 1,000 square miles and with a population exceeding 60,000 people, Cory Rink treats his job with due respect.

He knows a lot can happen once he puts on the uniform and heads out the door.

He is like a lot of other sheriffs in that respect, but it’s his occasional ride that sets him apart and links him to another generation of lawmen who drove the unpaved roads of Oklahoma.

One of his deputies, a few months after swearing in, found a 1965 Ford Galaxie 500 police car. It came with a working bubble light on top, a cage for the back seat, working spotlight, even a working siren.

He couldn’t resist. The car, purchased with his own paycheck, doesn’t see regular duty.

Rink drives it slow for parades and on sunny weekend patrols in quiet towns like Covington, Oklahoma where it rides extra smooth on the old brick streets.

He has covered a few traffic stops, and one arrest. A man with warrants out for his arrest got really excited about the prospect of riding to jail in the back of this old car only to be disappointed.

The old ‘iron bar hotel’ in Covington dates back to the early 1900’s when county deputies patrolled on horseback, but it’s possible that a car very much like Rink’s Galaxie 500 could have delivered a detainee back in the mid-60’s to early 70’s.

No one would have looked twice to see something like that back then.

These days, the most famous sheriff’s car in the state gets more than its share.

Rink’s ’65 Galaxie has 97,000 miles on the odometer. He says experts have told him the car probably served at least part of its life as a police patrol car because of some extra performance equipment under the hood.