Sam Carlino knew nothing of his grandfather Pete’s involvement in organized crime in Pueblo until 1985 while working at his family’s Italian sausage stand in San Jose, Calif. An elderly man took a sample and immediately recognized the recipe.

“He immediately asked if I was a Carlino, and as I said yes. He proceeded to tell me how he had known my grandfather during Prohibition,” Carlino wrote in his book “Colorado’s Carlino Brothers: A Bootlegging Empire.” “This stranger told me how he had known my grandfather, my dad and of my uncles and how he had worked for my grandfather during Prohibition.”