PERRY – George Bunker Jr. sounded like a man on a mission Saturday as he sat over lunch at the New Friendly Restaurant midway between the Washington County Sheriff’s Department in Machias and the northern portion of the county, where he lives.

If he were the county’s sheriff, Bunker said, he would “set goals and establish a work plan” to form a “focused and responsive, people-friendly sheriff’s department.”

Bunker, 50, knows how the sheriff’s office operates from both the inside – he was a patrol deputy from 1986 to 1993 – and from the outside.

Serving as a state legislator from Kossuth Township between 1994 and 1998 and again from 2000-2004, he worked on numerous law changes involving criminal justice and jails.

“I think the sheriff’s department needs to be changed, and it’s got to be changed from the outside,” Bunker said.

“We are not the state police; we are the police of the people of Washington County.”

Bunker currently lives in Baileyville and feels strongly that the department lacks full-time deputies who live and work amid the county’s northern communities. He notes that the deputy who lives farthest north in the county lives in Dennysville.

The Washington County sheriff needs to serve all of the county, he said.

“We need to treat all Washington County citizens as if they write our paychecks – because they do,” he said.

A Democrat, Bunker is one of five men running for the sheriff’s position.

The June 13 primary will bring the three Republican candidates down to one – those are Jeffrey Bishop of Cherryfield, Rodney Merritt of East Machias and Richard Price of Jonesboro.

The fifth candidate, independent Donnie Smith of Lubec, will not appear on the ballot until November, as will Bunker.

Bunker is a family man. He and his wife of 31 years, Christine, have grown children who are 29 and 28. They have a 13-year-old son they adopted last year and also provide foster care for a 16-year-old.

Since leaving the Legislature in 2004, Bunker has worked as a private investigator, operating the Northern Lights Investigative Agency out of Topsfield. He was on the board of directors of the Maine Licensed Private Investigators Association through 2005.

His current volunteer work involves the Washington County Drug Action Team – he is its treasurer overseeing $150,000 in federal funds through the Margaret Chase Smith Center to support initiatives around the county to fight the drugs battle.

During his years in the Legislature, he spent five years on the Joint Standing Committee of Criminal Justice. He supported bills that:

. Changed the system to enable flexibility of alternative sentencing, pre-release, drug court and restorative justice programs. The result was better management of the counties’ inmate and court-process programs.

. Required the state to pay its full share of Department of Corrections board costs to county jails. Previously they received about 30 percent owed on the dollar, and now the reimbursement runs at 100 percent.

. Required Maine hospitals to honor MaineCare rates for treatment of county jail inmate populations needing medical treatment. Just last year, this change saved Washington County more than $40,000, he said. Bunker was the primary sponsor of the bill.

Bunker is known within the northern tier of Washington County largely as a former legislator and restaurant-owner.

“I’m the guy who most likely fed you on Mother’s Day or at Easter dinner at the Log Cabin restaurant,” he said of the Topsfield place he owned between 1992 and 1999.

His family moved from Massachusetts to Topsfield in 1973 and ran stores and restaurants in Waite and Topsfield for about 25 years.

He graduated from Lee Academy in 1974. Then came nine years in the U.S. Navy on submarines and six years as a Washington County patrol deputy.

That relationship ended poorly, however. Then sheriff John Crowley fired Bunker in 1993, only for Bunker to gain $25,000 in a settlement from the county. Later, in 1996, Bunker’s firing was upheld in his civil suit against the county in Washington County Superior Court.

Since, he has sold insurance, served in the Legislature and continued to gain training and credentials on his own in law-enforcement operations. He believes the sheriff’s office needs to “focus on people, property and violent crimes.”

One of Bunker’s current focuses is his own health. In February he was diagnosed with a blood-borne cancer that attacks his bones, multiple myeloma. He has sought treatment in both Bangor and Boston. He said his condition is “manageable” and his prognosis is “good.”

He started his campaign for sheriff last January.

“It’s time for me to think about Washington County again, because as my voting district changed, I was representing less of Washington County and more of Penobscot County,” he said.

“Running for sheriff allows me to work on [in Machias] all that I fought for over 10 years in Augusta. There are a lot of Washington County issues that haven’t been addressed yet.”