Well, finally tonight, Elijah Morey grew up trying to keep up with his dad.

In their family, that meant growing hot peppers together and finding out who could handle them.

"Carolina Impact's" Chris Clark shows us how those backyard challenges became something the whole family had a hand in building.

- Hot, hotter, hottest.

This one is a little bit more savory.

- [Chris] Elijah Morey was six when he walked into the garden with a question for his dad.

- What do I have to do to be the youngest person to eat the hottest pepper in the world?

- [Chris] Brett started him with a hot banana pepper, and that first lesson didn't last very long.

- All of a sudden, he ran out of the garden fast as he could up to the house to get water.

- [Chris] For some kids, that might have been enough, but Elijah kept coming back.

- It was, I'm trying to show him that I've got what it takes to eat something just as hot as he can.

- [Chris] And dad wasn't handing out trophies.

They had their own way of deciding who won.

- So whoever gets the water first loses.

- [Chris] It wasn't long before their competition moved beyond the garden.

They started putting bottled sauces to the test, and some had them shaking their heads.

- Some sauces were just nasty and really hot and didn't taste like much.

- [Chris] For Elijah, all those disappointing sauces eventually gave him an idea.

- [Elijah] Could we not make a better one of these, something that is hot and tastes good?

- [Chris] That's when the family kitchen became their lab, pots bubbling, peppers cooking, and experiments that occasionally got a little out of hand.

- The windows would be wide open.

One time in particular, I remember I came home and immediately started coughing.

- [Chris] Turns out, creating the perfect blend of flavor and fire wasn't so easy.

Three years of trial and error produced plenty of frustration, but very little sauce.

- So we went from a quart pot to a bigger pot to an even bigger pot over the three-day period, and more and more ingredients.

- [Chris] By the time they had finished, their taste buds had taken a beating, but somewhere in that growing pot of possibilities, they'd found what they were looking for.

- It's got the flavor and sure enough, it's got the heat.

- [Chris] They bottled samples and sent them out to others to try.

What began as a backyard competition was becoming Elijah's Extreme, and Brett was already dreaming beyond their kitchen, drawing up plans to put their creation on grocery store shelves.

- When him and Elijah would talk more frequently about it, I knew it wasn't just a passing thing.

- [Chris] Elijah had already shown a knack for making a buck, buying and selling things on eBay, and his dad saw something in him that couldn't be taught in a classroom.

- He was just born with like that entrepreneurial spirit, like that desire to just kind of be his own boss, do his own thing.

- [Chris] But behind the business plans and big dreams, Brett and Monique carried a concern that had little to do with hot peppers.

Elijah has lived with Crohn's disease since childhood, a chronic condition that causes inflammation in the digestive tract, often bringing pain, fatigue, and urgent digestive issues that can strike without warning.

It's an illness that can turn even the simplest plans into a question mark.

- It's kind of like I always feel like I have a tether to my house and I don't want to go too far.

- [Chris] His parents had watched him miss out on things other kids took for granted, and as he grew older, they wondered how he'd navigate a world built around schedules that don't always bend.

- We knew that 9:00 to 5:00 probably wasn't going to be a possibility.

- [Chris] For Brett, the answer wasn't simply finding Elijah a job.

It was building him a future where he could make his own opportunities.

- The original intent was this is going to be for him.

We're going to build this for him.

- [Chris] Of course, getting the orders is only half the battle.

Somebody still has to fill the bottles.

And tucked away in the mountains near Candler, North Carolina, the Moreys found a partner with the perfect place to handle their growing demand, an old fire station.

Where firefighters once answered the bell, Joel Morey now answers the call for hot sauce.

His firehouse bottling company produces sauces for roughly 35 businesses, including Elijah's Extreme.

- The nature of our business being spicy food makers, we weren't good to have around for a whole lot of other people.

- [Chris] These days, the firehouse is filled with bottles, labels, and the unmistakable aroma of peppers.

The operation stretches well beyond these walls.

Just a few miles down the road, Joel's work begins in the fields.

15 acres of peppers grow against the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

- We've got, you know, warm days and cool nights, you know, fairly high humidity, so we've been very successful growing chili peppers.

- [Chris] Back inside the firehouse, the work comes full circle.

Today, Joel's crew is bottling Elijah's Reaper sauce.

The filling, capping, and labeling are a far cry from those early experiments in the Morey family kitchen, but the idea that started it all hasn't changed.

- Flavor first was kind of the concept and then you know, it's got just enough heat to kind of keep you bringing back... Coming back for more.

- That one's called Extreme Regret.

- [Chris] For customers, it's another bottle of hot sauce.

For Monique, every one carries a little piece of the family's journey.

- I see a lot of dedication and sacrifice that goes into those bottles.

- Garlic, habanero, it's... This was actually our most mild sauce.

- And perhaps nobody understands that sacrifice more than Elijah.

A recent complication with Crohn's disease lasted nearly 12 months.

It forced him to confront the very uncertainty his parents had worried about all those years ago.

And in the middle of that difficult stretch, he came to understand just how much their faith in him had meant.

- I don't know where I'd be.

- I would be on their couch or I'd be fully homeless or something.

I don't know where I would be if I didn't have the, the people around me.

- [Chris] What started as a father teaching his son to handle a little heat has become something neither could have imagined back in that garden.

And while Elijah's Extreme may have been built around hot peppers, its foundation has always been something a whole lot stronger, family.

For "Carolina Impact," I'm Chris Clark.