This broker cannot let his guards down.

• Position: People

Randy James believes firmly in the redemptive power of Jesus and the addictive power of marijuana. The inventor of the Tow-Vac street sweeper and owner of two Cullowhee-based sweeping companies learned about pot first.

The Louisiana native started toking as a teen. He continued into his 20s while working as a roughneck on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. He quit when his employer decided to give drug tests. He got a job in West Texas with a driller who didn't make his people pee in a cup. His dealer paid him to tote pot when he went home to New Orleans on weekends. Pot turned to coke. He was busted in 1992. The dealer was a government informant. "They gave me a 13-year sentence for conspiracy and possession of more than 250 kilos of cocaine and 250 kilos of marijuana."

The prosecutor believed he was part of a drug ring implicated in the murder of a federal judge; he insisted he wasn't. He wound up in the federal prison in Texas, angry at the government, at himself, at God. "I'd attend these Sunday school classes in prison so I could argue and dispute. I read the Bible two times through, trying to disprove things."

Something he hadn't expected happened. He started believing what he read. Then one of his drug-running buddies got arrested and, during a trial before the same judge who heard his case, corroborated his story. His sentence reduced, he was released in 1997.

James, now 40...