DON STAHURSKI: COLORADO'S KRISPY KREME MAN.

• Position: Brief Article

Don Stahurski has been chased down the street while driving a PT Cruiser, he's been stalked in parking lots, and he's been asked a lot of questions wherever he goes.

Stahurski is not a rock star or a movie star, however. He is president of Glazed Investments Inc. -- the man who brought the first Krispy Kreme Doughnuts shop to Colorado.

Everybody, it seems, has a Krispy Kreme story.

"People will stop me all the time and tell me their history with Krispy Kreme," said Stahurski, who occasionally drives a spruced-up Krispy Kreme Cruiser. "And on our Web site, we've gotten over 250 e-mails from people just in Colorado telling their stories about Krispy Kreme."

There's a mystique that surrounds Krispy Kreme, which opened its first shop using a secret recipe in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1937, and by April 1999 saw sweet success on Wall Street with an IPO. Over the decades, Krispy Kreme expanded slowly into other states. Colorado is the 25th.

Still, nothing prepared Stahurski for the stampede that came on March 27, opening day at the store near County Line and Quebec Street, in Lone Tree. People camped outside the night before, then lined up for blocks, both on foot (two blocks) and in cars (five blocks), as a staff of about 50 operated doughnut machines at capacity -- making 230 dozen per hour and selling them as fast.

The second customer at the 24-hour drive-through bought 150 dozen doughnuts. After that, Stahurski set a 10-dozen limit.

By the end of the day, Stahurski said the store had sold enough doughnuts to stack a mile high, or at least 63,360. On March 29, at 1:30 a.m., there were 150 cars in line.

"We hoped to have a good turnout on opening day, but I never expected the crowd we had all of opening week," Stahurski said.

Four or five more shops are expected to open in the Denver area, with others planned for Colorado Springs.

Stahurski is at a loss to explain people's...