Tony "Cookie" Quintana has always been known to have a sweet tooth — in fact, that's why he's been called Cookie for most of his life.

"Jack Sweeney started calling me Cookie when we were students at Leah Harvey Junior High. I used to come to school with gingersnaps in my pockets and the name stuck," recalled Quintana, now 82.

Sugared treats not only gave Quintana his nickname, they created a livelihood. As the proprietor of the Baskin-Robbins franchise at 1841 Cerrillos Road for the past 47 years, Quintana has done his part to sweet-talk most Santa Feans.

According to Quintana, who opened the first Baskin-Robbins franchise in Santa Fe in 1962, he owns the nation's oldest family-run franchise for the corporation. When he and his wife worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1960, they would stand in line for up to an hour at the local Baskin-Robbins there to buy ice cream for their two children.

During these longs waits he got to thinking that maybe Santa Fe could use an ice-cream franchise, and he turned his dream into a reality. Quintana's purchase was the first such franchise in Santa Fe and the 100th for Baskin-Robbins, with the majority of their stores on the West Coast.

As Quintana's business grew so did his family, to include seven sons and two daughters. All nine of his children and his wife, Sarah, have helped Quintana at the store.

Quintana was born in 1927 in Durango, Colo., to Antonio María Quintana and Lucita Gonzales. As Quintana explains, "My father, who was from Pojoaque, was working in the mines in Durango when he met my mother, who was from the San Luis Valley, at a dance." The couple moved to Santa Fe a few years after they were married.

Quintana attended Catron Elementary, Leah Harvey Junior High and graduated from Santa Fe High School in 1945. He was drafted right after high school into the Army and was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany, for 18 months. There he worked as a company clerk during the transition at the end of World War II. Returning to Santa Fe, he went to work at the lab in Los Alamos as a clerk, where he met Sarah McMillan. The couple celebrated their 51st anniversary in September. Besides their nine children, they have 13 grandchildren.

While Quintana scooped out ice cream, he also took the time to be a sports referee for the schools. For more than 35 years, you could find Quintana in his striped black-and-white uniform, calling the plays at basketball games in and around Santa Fe. This was a natural for Quintana, since he was named an All-Star athlete in the 1940s in both basketball and football.

Between his sports activities and ice cream business, Quintana had an almost legendary popularity with children. Every year for what seemed eons, parents who took the time to fill out a birthday form for their children at Baskin-Robbins would receive a birthday card and an offer for a free ice cream cone in the mail. Like the joy of Christmas morning, these annual birthday cones became a ritual for families as they came together at Quintana's store. As he handed over the free birthday cone, the rest of the family purchased their own sundaes and shakes.

Quintana retired from the business in 2006, and passed the baton to his 37-year-old son, Chris, who now runs the store. Looking back on his career — one result of which is a strong forearm from scooping millions of ice cream cones in hundreds of different flavors ranging from bubble gum to pumpkin pie — I wondered what Cookie Quintana's favorite ice cream flavor was.

And, in a very matter-of-fact tone, he answered, "vanilla."

Ana Pacheco is at work on the city of Santa Fe's 400th Anniversary Commemorative issue that will be published in The Santa Fe New Mexican on Feb. 7. Her weekly tribute to our community elders appears every Sunday please call her with story suggestions for this column at 505-474-2800.