She's got a line on Wilmington.

• Position: Brenda Brown-Junious

My riding partner and I were the last police officers smoke-screened in Mecklenburg County," says Henry Severs, reminiscing about the days, 50 years ago, when moonshiners would pump kerosene and oil into their exhaust pipes to leave the police in a fog.

Severs once hit a smoke screen doing 85 mph, and his car flipped over. (Neither he nor his partner was badly hurt.) Eventually, Severs found safer work: He quit confiscating liquor - and started selling it.

Just call him "chief." That's how he's known to Alcoholic Beverage Control Board employees across the state. Severs, 75, who plans to retire in August, has been general manager of Mecklenburg County's ABC board for 13 years.

When Mecklenburg County became the first place in North Carolina to vote in liquor-by-the-drink in 1978, Severs had a system ready to go in three weeks, says Bill Hester, administrator of the state ABC commission. "Other [cities and counties] emulated what the chief did."

Private-sector managers would probably like to emulate Severs' numbers. In fiscal 1989, the Mecklenburg board made a net profit of more than $4.5 million ($3.5 million of which went to the city and county) on $39 million in cash sales at 19 stores. The county did 11 percent of the state's total liquor business last year.

Severs considers himself a retailer - like his father, who ran a feed-and-seed store in a section of Charlotte once known as Seversville, after Severs' grandfather, a prominent landowner.

Severs became a county motorcycle cop in 1937 and soon was tapped to attend the National Academy, the FBI's police-training school. He worked briefly as an FBI special agent before returning to Charlotte, where at 27 he was made acting county chief of police during World War II.

In 1947, Charlotteans voted to create ABC stores, and Severs, having made a name for himself chasing bootleggers, became the first employee of the new ABC board. He served as chief of law enforcement until he became general manager. Last year, the board named its offices and warehouse in his honor.

None of the bottles Severs sells end up in his household, however. His wife is a teetotaler. Severs used to drink a little socially and at conventions, he says, but "I never did use it much."

She's got a line on Wilmington

Brenda Brown-Junious got some static at first, but now her three-year-old business is ringing up sales.

Brown-Junious, 39, wires homes and businesses for telephone and cable-television service. "At...