Cop abandons L.A. law, offers Tar Heels tastier tortillas.

• Position: Chester Brunty, Casa Christina tortilla factory in North Carolina; People - Company profile

His first taste of tortillas from a Tar Heel store tipped him off

"They were dehydrated from being frozen so long. They had a real chemical smell because of preservatives. They were terrible," recalls Chester Brunty.

The result? Brunty, a former Los Angeles cop, opened a tortilla factory in, of all places, Newton. It has been just 14 months since the first tortilla rolled off the line, but the fledgling company already supplies 25 restaurants in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

"When you have something frozen, there's no moisture inside, and it's very easy to break," says Marco Pineda, manager of Charlotte's La Paz Restaurante Mexicano, which used to order frozen tortillas from Atlanta. "His are never frozen, always fresh. ... We've been working with him since they opened."

But why come to North Carolina, the land of barbecue - not burritos - to manufacture tortillas? "We wanted to get out of Los Angeles for our kids, just to get out of the craziness and the earthquakes," says Brunty, 39.

He and his wife, also a police officer, made a couple of trips to Hickory to visit relatives and fell in love with the area. Two years ago, they moved to nearby Conover, and Brunty, then a sheriff's deputy at the Catawba County Jail, started asking questions about where North Carolina's Mexican restaurants were getting their tortillas.

Most, he discovered, were using frozen tortillas. Convinced he could market fresh ones, he and his uncle, Phil Riddle, opened Casa Christina (named for Brunty's wife, who is of Mexican...